The Supreme Court just let Trump resume deporting migrants to countries that aren’t their own, and 25,000 have already been sent to 29 of them

The Supreme Court has reportedly sided with the Trump administration on third-country deportations for the second time. The justices reportedly ruled that the administration can resume rapidly deporting immigrants to countries other than their own without giving them a chance to contest their removals, according to The Guardian. The administration had argued that a lower-court requirement to give immigrants notice and a chance to claim fear of torture kept it from efficiently removing them. 

Apparently, the conservative majority lifted that decision, with dissent from Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. However, as is typical in emergency orders, the justices did not explain their decision. The administration recently filed an emergency request asking the justices to let it continue third-country deportations, including to countries the US State Department considers dangerous. 

Two lower courts had separately sided with the immigrants before the Supreme Court stepped in. The administration’s immigration crackdown also recently lost a federal appeals court ruling over expanded detention. Attorney General Todd Blanche backed the ruling in a post on X after the order came down. “Entirely lawful and a critical tool for immigration enforcement,” Blanche wrote. He added that, unlike the lower court, the Supreme Court waited to hear both sides before deciding.

Todd Blanche says the Supreme Court heard both sides before ruling

According to Third Country Deportation Watch, a project run by Refugees International and Human Rights First, the administration has used agreements with other nations to deport more than 25,000 immigrants to at least 29 countries. The Central African Republic, which is dealing with terrorism and militia instability, is among the countries to receive the deportees. South Sudan, which has also received deportees, is in a severe humanitarian crisis as its economy and political system have collapsed. 

However, two dozen UN human rights experts warned just before the ruling that third-country deportations have triggered a cascade of human rights violations that could prove deadly. Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva spoke out against third-country deportations, as one of her constituents was among the deportees. She claims the US is sending vulnerable people into harm’s way and potentially to their deaths. “This cruel and inhumane policy is a black eye on Lady Liberty,” Grijalva said.

Witnesses and human rights lawyers alleged that two men expelled to Equatorial Guinea were bound and beaten before being pushed down a flight of stairs. Apparently, one of them was Grijalva’s constituent Ahmed Soliman, a gay man from Egypt who spent most of his life in Phoenix. Detainees claim the men were targeted because they had spoken to journalists about conditions there.