The US Supreme Court has cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s administration to resume deportations of migrants to countries other than their homeland.
By 6-3, the justices reversed a lower court order requiring the government to give migrants a “meaningful opportunity” to tell officials what risks they might face being deported to a third country.
The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the majority ruling, saying it was “rewarding lawlessness”.
The case involves eight migrants from Myanmar, South Sudan, Cuba, Mexico, Laos and Vietnam, who were deported in May on a plane said to be heading for South Sudan. The Trump administration said they were “the worst of the worst”.
Boston-based US District Judge Brian Murphy ruled the removals had violated an order he issued in April that migrants must have a chance to argue they could be tortured or killed if they were removed to third countries – even if their other legal appeals had already failed.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson criticised the majority’s unsigned decision on Monday, calling it a “gross abuse”.
“Apparently, the court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in farflung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a district court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled,” Sotomayor wrote.
“That use of discretion is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.”
The Department of Homeland Security said the ruling was “a victory for the safety and security of the American people.”
“Fire up the deportation planes,” said the agency’s spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin.
The Trump administration said the eight migrants had committed “heinous crimes” in the US, including murder, arson and armed robbery.
But the migrants’ lawyers said in a filing to the Supreme Court that many of the detainees had no criminal convictions.
The National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which has represented the plaintiffs, called the court’s ruling “horrifying”.
Its executive director, Trina Realmuto, said the decision exposed their clients to “torture and death”.
Trump brought the case to the justices after a Boston-based appeals court last month declined to block the lower court ruling.
The original intervention by Judge Murphy, a Biden appointee, prompted the US government to keep the migrants in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti, where an American military base is located.
US Solicitor General John Sauer told the Supreme Court that immigration agents had “been forced to establish a makeshift detention facility for dangerous criminals” in a converted conference room.
Sauer said the government is often unable to deport violent criminal migrants to their homelands as those countries refuse to take them back, which he said allows them to stay in the US “victimising law-abiding Americans”.
Monday’s decision is another victory for the Republican president in his pursuit of mass deportations.
Last month, the Supreme Court allowed Trump to end Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan nationals, affecting about 350,000 migrants.
In another ruling in May, the justices said the president could temporarily pause a humanitarian programme that has allowed nearly half a million migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to stay in the US for two years.