A divided Supreme Court has allowed the administration of United States President Donald Trump to restart swift removals of migrants to countries other than their homeland, lifting a court order that requires they get a chance to challenge the deportations.
The high court majority did not detail its reasoning in the brief order issued on Monday, as is typical on its emergency docket. All three liberal justices dissented.
In May, immigration officials put eight people on a plane to South Sudan, though they were diverted to a US naval base in Djibouti after a judge stepped in.
The refugees and migrants from countries including Myanmar, Vietnam and Cuba had been convicted of violent crimes in the US. Immigration officials have said that they were unable to return them quickly to their home countries.
The case comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by Trump’s administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living undocumented in the US.
In a scathing 19-page dissent, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the court’s action exposes “thousands to the risk of torture or death.”
“The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard,” she wrote in the dissent, which was joined by the other two liberal judges, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Lawyers for some of the migrants who had been on the flight to South Sudan said they would continue to press their case in court. “The ramifications of Supreme Court’s order will be horrifying,” said Trina Realmuto, the executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, meanwhile, said in a social media post that the decision was a “MAJOR win for the safety and security of the American people”.
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