WASHINGTON — The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to make it easier for officials to deport convicted criminals to “third countries” that are not their countries of origin.
The administration is seeking to block an injunction in which Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy 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 10 days to bring their claims.
Just last week, he 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 but cannot be sent to their countries of origin, 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.
Trina Realmuto, a lawyer at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance who represents the plaintiffs, said in a statement that Murphy “took limited and appropriate actions to ensure that people are afforded due process protections before the government can deport them to third countries.”
Murphy’s original order in April 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.
Didi Martinez contributed.
