The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to make it easier to deport migrants to countries that aren’t even their own.
The Justice Department on Thursday requested the court lift a judge’s nationwide injunction that allows migrants the ability to obtain legal assistance before being sent away to countries to which they have no reasonable connection.
The administration argues that its policy adheres to constitutional due process requirements, but when issuing the preliminary injunction in April, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy didn’t agree.
Murphy wrote that the government “executing third-country removals without providing notice and a meaningful opportunity to present fear-based claims” likely violated due process protections.
“All nine sitting justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, the assistant solicitor general of the United States, Congress, common sense, basic decency, and this court all disagree,” Murphy added.
Now the Trump administration is testing whether the high court indeed does.
At issue is the Department of Homeland Security trying to find a workaround for migrants who have been granted protections against being deported to their home countries. Sending them to a “third country,” it argued, wouldn’t be an issue, as long it gave assurances that migrants wouldn’t prosecuted or tortured.
Immigrant rights groups sued, and Murphy then made his injunction.
“The Court has found it likely that these deportations have or will be wrongfully executed and that there has at least been no opportunity for Plaintiffs to demonstrate the substantial harms they might face,” Murphy wrote in April.
Solicitor General John Sauer insisted Tuesday that the need for deportations amounts to a “crisis,” one which Murphy is interfering with.
“Those judicially created procedures are currently wreaking havoc on the third-country removal process,” Sauer argued. “In addition to usurping the Executive’s authority over immigration policy, the injunction disrupts sensitive diplomatic, foreign-policy, and national-security efforts.”
As the case makes its way through the courts, the Trump administration has been trying to send migrants to South Sudan, but they are being held in Djibouti instead. The government is also looking into sending migrants to Libya, Rwanda and Angola, according to CBS News.
