Supreme Court allows Trump to restart controversial deportations to countries that migrants have no connection to

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to restart its program of removing migrants to countries other than their homeland without giving them an opportunity to raise human rights concerns, and said it would hear arguments in the case later this year.

The decision marked the third time the high court has allowed the Trump administration to enforce that effort on a temporary basis.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented from that decision.

But while the Trump administration can continue the program now, the court also said it would hear merits arguments in the case this December, adding a high profile immigration appeal involving the Trump administration to its docket. A decision is expected by July.

The administration launched the policy last year as part of its crackdown on immigration. The United States has at times faced difficulty attempting to deport migrants to their home countries if the leadership in those countries declines to receive them. President Donald Trump’s answer to that problem was to deport those migrants to some other country, even if the migrant had no ties to the destination.

An estimated 25,000 migrants have already been removed under the policy.

It drew scrutiny last year after immigrant rights groups revealed that one group of migrants, initially bound for South Sudan, were being detained in Djibouti. Those migrants were held in a converted Conex shipping container.

The Supreme Court set three defined questions to decide on the merits, including whether the district court that ruled against Trump had jurisdiction to resolve the case, whether it had authority to decide it for the entire class of people affected and whether the Trump administration’s policy is lawful. It also said the Trump administration could propose “other questions” it deemed appropriate.

The court did not explain its reasoning in a brief, unsigned order. And the three liberal justices who would have blocked the policy also did not write to explain their position.

“For the third time in 18 months, the Supreme Court has been called upon to stay the same local district judge’s campaign to halt the Trump Administration from removing illegal aliens including many of the worst-of-the-worst criminals to countries willing to receive them,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a statement. “Today’s ruling from the Supreme Court yet again affirms the lawfulness of the President’s homeland security agenda.”

Trump filed an emergency appeal on September 24 seeking to pause a decision from the Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals that effectively blocked the removals. The administration had argued that time was of the essence because the appeals court decision had “created substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations.”

The Supreme Court had already reviewed the policy at an earlier stage of the case last year and allowed it to continue over the dissent of the three liberals – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The court then sided again with the administration in a case involving a specific group of migrants that had been held for several weeks on a military base in Djibouti.

The Justice Department, in its appeal, complained that lower courts had “tripled down” with rulings against the policy despite the repeated Supreme Court decisions allowing it. The administration said the latest decision had caused “chaos” and “required a new round of diplomatic engagement” after it was required by the court order to cancel flights carrying dozens of migrants.

But the groups representing the migrants noted that the lower courts had entered a final judgment in the case, which is different from the earlier preliminary decisions that reached the Supreme Court before. The high court’s decisions on its emergency docket are not final decisions on the merits of the case, even if they offer an indication about which way the court is leaning.

The legal question at the center of the case revolves around the Convention Against Torture, ratified by the Senate in 1994, that generally bars deportation or extradition to countries where there is a possibility that the migrant might be tortured. The law is vague about how an administration is supposed to make that determination and what process rights are due to the migrant at issue.

Lower courts have found the law requires notice to the migrant and demands that officials give the person an opportunity to raise a credible claim of fear that they might be tortured. The Department of Homeland Security said it is enough that officials have received blanket assurances from the country that no one deported there will be tortured.

“Denying a stay does not prevent third-country removals,” attorneys for the migrants told the Supreme Court. “Rather, it simply requires them to do so lawfully.”

This story has been updated with additional details.

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