SCOTUS: Feds can deport illegal immigrant group to South Sudan

The Supreme Court in a Thursday unsigned order said the Trump administration could deport a group of illegal immigrants to South Sudan. The eight men have been held in a converted shipping container in the East African country of Djibouti since a Massachusetts federal judge ordered their deportation flight halted en route to South Sudan, according to the Associated Press.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy had ruled that illegal immigrants couldn’t be quickly deported to a country not listed on their removal orders. The Supreme Court on June 23 placed a stay on that decision until an appeals court could rule on the case. But Murphy later ordered that the stay didn’t apply to the group in Djibouti, according to the Associated Press. The Supreme Court’s majority on Thursday clarified that Murphy’s ruling couldn’t countermand the stay they granted.

What do we know about the deportees? The eight men have all been convicted of serious crimes, with some of them serving sentences for murder and sexual assault, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Only one of them is South Sudanese; the rest are from other countries including Burma and Vietnam.

The department’s assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said on Thursday that the men would be deported to South Sudan by Friday.

What did the Supreme Court’s liberal justices say about the decision? Justice Elena Kagan wrote that she didn’t agree with the June 23 stay, but a lower judge couldn’t contradict it. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. Sotomayor said that the government didn’t give the deportees due process and that they faced the risks of torture and death.