A federal judge blocked deportations for eight migrants Monday night in what the Trump administration called a “lawless act of defiance” of the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration earlier on Monday to move forward with quickly deporting illegal migrants to countries not specified in their removal orders. The ruling pausing an injunction issued by Judge Brian Murphy, a Biden appointee, which required the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to give migrants notice and allow them to raise concerns about potential threats of torture before deporting them to a “third country.”
However, Murphy issued an order Monday night blocking immediate removal of eight migrants currently held at a U.S. naval base in Djibouti to South Sudan.
Murphy wrote that an earlier May 21 order issued after finding the administration violated his preliminary injunction was still in effect, citing Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion.
Sotomayor suggested Murphy’s “remedial orders are not properly before this Court because the Government has not appealed them, nor sought a stay pending a forthcoming appeal.”
“All eight individuals—none of whom have final removal orders to South Sudan—are being deprived of basic procedural rights and access to protection that Congress and the Constitution require,” the migrants told Murphy in their Monday night filing. “Absent injunctive relief, these class members face imminent risk of deportation to a volatile country where they likely will face indefinite detention and other forms of torture.”
The Trump administration called Murphy’s ruling “unprecedented defiance” of the Supreme Court’s authority in a Tuesday morning filing.
“The district court’s ruling of last night is a lawless act of defiance that, once again, disrupts sensitive diplomatic relations and slams the brakes on the Executive’s lawful efforts to effectuate third-country removals,” Solicitor General John Sauer told the justices.
“For over two months now, the Executive has labored under an injunction that this Court yesterday deemed unenforceable,” Sauer continued. “This Court should immediately make clear that the district court’s enforcement order has no effect, and put a swift end to the ongoing irreparable harm to the Executive Branch and its agents, who remain under baseless threat of contempt as they are forced to house dangerous criminal aliens at a military base in the Horn of Africa that now lies on the borders of a regional conflict.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Fox News Monday night to “expect fireworks tomorrow we hold this judge accountable for refusing to obey the Supreme Court.”
“A Boston judge halted the deportation of illegal aliens convicted of child rape and murder,” Miller wrote on X. “Finally, the Supreme Court stepped in and halted the judge’s lawless edict. Late last night the Boston judge claimed authority to overrule the Supreme Court and defied the Court’s order.”
In her dissent joined by justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, Sotomayor wrote that she “cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion.”
“Rather than allowing our lower court colleagues to manage this high-stakes litigation with the care and attention it plainly requires, this Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied,” Sotomayor wrote.
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