Trump administration asks Supreme Court to lift limits on deportations to ‘third countries’

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to make it easier for officials to deport convicted criminals to ‘third countries’ that are not their nations of origin.

The administration is seeking to block an injunction issued by Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy that said the affected immigrants nationwide should be given a “meaningful opportunity” to raise concerns that they may be at risk of torture, persecution or death.

Murphy later clarified that they should have at least ten days to bring their claims.

Just last week, the judge said the administration had violated his previous order by flying eight migrants to South Sudan. The men are now being held in a U.S. facility in Djibouti.

All the immigrants potentially affected by the litigation are already subject to deportation, so the case hinges on what legal process they receive before they can be deported.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the new filing that Murphy’s rulings require the government to undertake “an onerous set of procedures” that he had no authority to require.

“Those judicially created procedures are currently wreaking havoc on the third-country removal process. In addition to usurping the Executive’s authority over immigration policy, the injunction disrupts sensitive diplomatic, foreign-policy, and national-security efforts,” Sauer wrote.

Murphy’s original April order concluded that plaintiffs were merely asking for basic due process.

“Plaintiffs are simply asking to be told they are going to be deported to a new country before they are taken to such a country, and be given an opportunity to explain why such a deportation will likely result in their persecution, torture, and/or death,” he wrote.

On Monday night, Murphy rejected a government attempt to reconsider his requirements as it relates to the men now in South Sudan.

“It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder and more logistically cumbersome than Defendants anticipated,” he wrote.

“It continues to be this Court’s sincere hope that reason can get the better of rhetoric,” he added.