Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene on South Sudan deportations

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to block a lower-court ruling that says the government cannot deport citizens of other countries to South Sudan without giving them a chance to raise claims that they fear being tortured or killed there.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a court filing that a single federal judge should not be permitted to halt the administration’s nationwide efforts to deport migrants convicted of crimes to countries other than the ones designated on their removal orders, including to South Sudan.

Immigration law, he wrote, gives the executive branch broad authority to deport people, including to countries willing to accept them when other options aren’t available.

“In addition to usurping the Executive’s authority over immigration policy, the injunction disrupts sensitive diplomatic, foreign-policy, and national-security efforts,” Sauer told the justices.

The Trump administration said it tried to deport eight men, seven of whom were not citizens of South Sudan. U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy ruled last month that the United States cannot deport the men to South Sudan – a conflict-ridden African country that the U.S. government says is unsafe to visit because of “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict” – without giving them ample time to fight that removal.

Last week he scolded the U.S. government, saying it violated his order, and said the Constitution requires an opportunity for deportees to contest their removal to a place that is not their native country.

Murphy said the deportees in that category must be interviewed by the government, with their attorney and interpreter present, and the men can choose whether that interview is in-person or remote. The government must also give the men at least three days’ notice before the interview and at least 15 days to legally challenge their deportation to a third country.

Over the weekend, Murphy denied the government’s motion to set aside his order, accusing Justice Department lawyers of “manufacturing” chaos as a way to evade his instructions.

The Justice Department then asked the Supreme Court to immediately block Murphy’s ruling while litigation continues in lower courts on the merits of the issue. The government has made numerous such requests in the first several months of the second Trump administration, as the president’s unprecedented efforts to reshape the U.S. government and its policies prompt a torrent of litigation.

In its brief to the high court about the South Sudan case, the government accused the judge of having “slammed on the brakes while these aliens were literally midflight – thus forcing the government to detain them at a military base in Djibouti not designed or equipped to hold such criminals.”

In a different court filing last week, Justice Department attorneys called Murphy’s orders vague and burdensome and said they prevented President Donald Trump from exercising his executive branch authorities around immigration.

But Murphy rebuked that characterization and said he gave both sides ample opportunity to ask for clarity. The judge did not order the government to return the men to the United States, but said Trump officials could bring them back to the U.S. if officials believed they could not meet his requirements to interview the men and allow them to meet with their lawyers abroad.

“It is hard to come to any conclusion other than that Defendants invite lack of clarity as a means of evasion,” Murphy wrote in his weekend order. “It cannot be said enough that this is the result Defendants asked for.”

He is among several judges who have expressed frustration over the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation plans, saying they violate the due process rights guaranteed to migrants by the American legal system.

Trump and his allies have disparaged Murphy online, calling him an activist judge who is preventing the president from carrying out his immigration agenda. “The Judges are absolutely out of control,” Trump wrote about Murphy on social media last week.

Murphy’s weekend order quoted the transcript of his earlier court hearing, in which the government said in court that it would be able to provide the men with due process abroad.

“Since that hearing, merely five days ago, Defendants have changed their tune. It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder and more logistically cumbersome than Defendants anticipated,” Murphy wrote.

“However, the Court never said that Defendants had to convert their foreign military base into an immigration facility; it only left that as an option, again, at Defendants’ request. The other option, of course, has always been to simply return to the status quo of roughly one week ago, or else choose any other location to complete the required process.”