Another Disastrous Civil Rights Ruling: Supreme Court Greenlights Third-Country Deportations without Due Process

WASHINGTON — In a stark and controversial order handed down Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to resume deporting immigrants to “third countries”—nations where they hold no citizenship, no ties, and in many cases, face serious threats of torture or death.

In a brief, unsigned decision on its emergency docket, the Court stayed a federal judge’s preliminary injunction that had required the government to provide notice and a meaningful opportunity for migrants to challenge their removal to such third-countries. The ruling effectively halts due process protections for thousands of noncitizens who now face the prospect of being deported to some of the most dangerous places on earth.

The Court’s conservative majority offered no explanation for its decision. Only the three liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—issued a public dissent. In it, Justice Sotomayor condemned the Court for enabling the government’s lawless behavior.

“The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law,” Sotomayor wrote. “Free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard.”

The case, Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., centers on the Trump administration’s new policy of “third-country removals,” a maneuver that sidesteps traditional deportation norms. Rather than returning migrants to their country of origin, the government seeks to send them to any country willing to accept them—even if that nation is rife with civil conflict, and even if the person has no connection to it.

The case drew widespread attention in May when eight men were loaded onto a plane bound for South Sudan, a war-torn country under a U.S. State Department travel advisory warning of “ongoing armed conflict.” The flight was rerouted to Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. military base in Djibouti, where the men have remained under ICE supervision. Only one of the eight is South Sudanese; the others face indefinite detention in a foreign military facility while their fates are decided.

The now-paused injunction was issued by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy of Massachusetts, who ordered that migrants must be given at least 10 days to raise claims of fear of torture, followed by 15 days to challenge any adverse findings. The administration sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court after both the district court and the First Circuit Court of Appeals denied a stay.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Judge Murphy’s order was wreaking “havoc” on the government’s ability to conduct removals and interfering with sensitive diplomatic and national security operations. In his filings, he described ICE officers operating under physical threat in Djibouti, guarding detained migrants in a converted conference room while facing health risks and rocket fire from nearby Yemen.

But critics argue that the administration created the crisis it now invokes. According to filings and testimony in the case, the Trump administration had already violated the district court’s order multiple times. In one instance, a gay man identified as O.C.G. was deported to Guatemala despite an immigration judge’s finding that he was likely to be tortured there. In another, four detainees were flown from Guantanamo Bay to El Salvador with no notice, and six more were sent to South Sudan under similar conditions.

“The administration’s conduct in this case has been nothing short of brazen,” said Leila Kang of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. “It’s attempting to weaponize deportation not as an orderly legal process, but as a tool of retaliation and deterrence.”

Justice Sotomayor’s dissent meticulously laid out how the government flouted court orders. She criticized the administration’s policy of providing detainees with notice of their removal only hours in advance—sometimes as little as 16 hours—and offering no real opportunity to contest deportation to nations that may violate the Convention Against Torture, to which the U.S. is a party.

In one critical passage, she compared the government’s position to that of “an arsonist who calls 911 to report firefighters for violating a noise ordinance.” She added, “Even if the orders in question had been mistaken, the Government had a duty to obey them until they were reversed by orderly and proper proceedings.”

Civil rights advocates are sounding the alarm not only about the ruling’s impact, but about the procedural posture in which it arrived. Once again, the Court used its “shadow docket”—an emergency pathway that allows for major rulings without full briefing, oral argument, or written explanation from the majority.

“This is how constitutional rights die,” said ACLU attorney Stephen Kang. “Not with a ruling on the merits, but with an unsigned order issued late on a Monday.”

The Trump administration has relied increasingly on third-country removals after many home countries, such as Myanmar and Venezuela, have refused to accept returnees, especially those convicted of crimes. In response, ICE has sought to send people to South Sudan, Libya, and El Salvador—countries plagued by instability and often unwilling or unable to ensure safety.

At the heart of the legal battle is whether migrants facing removal must be given notice and a chance to raise fears of torture or persecution under the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act and the Convention Against Torture. The district court found that denying such a process violated both federal statutes and the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

The Supreme Court’s stay does not decide the case on the merits, but it effectively allows the government to carry out deportations while the appeals process continues. The result, advocates say, could mean life or death for many.

“This is not a technicality. It’s a matter of survival,” said one immigration attorney representing detainees in Djibouti. “We’re talking about people being flown across the globe, without warning, into active war zones. That’s what’s at stake here.”

Despite the Court’s order, Judge Murphy retained jurisdiction over other aspects of the case and issued a follow-up ruling barring immediate deportation of the men held in Djibouti. But without Supreme Court intervention on the underlying legal questions, that protection could evaporate.

The ruling marks another milestone in the Court’s increasingly aggressive deference to executive immigration enforcement—one that critics warn is eroding basic legal safeguards.

“The due process clause,” Sotomayor reminded her colleagues, “represents the principle that ours is a government of laws, not of men.”

Categories:

Tags: