Supreme Court allows Trump administration to deport migrants to third countries

Jay Weaver and Syra Ortiz Blanes, Miami Herald on Jun 23, 2025

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The Trump administration can deport migrants to third countries other than their homeland, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday, overturning a federal judge’s decision in Massachusetts that had stopped such deportations.

The high court’s ruling paves the way for the administration to transfer deported men currently held at a U.S. military base in Djibouti to South Sudan.

It also strips away protection for migrants to challenge their removal to a country other than their own based on a claim that they might face the risk of persecution, torture and possibly death.

The court’s brief order provided no explanation. However, it was consistent with prior rulings by the majority of justices in allowing the administration to deport hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan nationals with Temporary Protected Status and other immigrants, such as Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans, while they sue the administration to reverse its deportation policies.

The nine-member court’s stay will remain in effect while the Department of Homeland Security appeals U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy’s decision in Boston — a dispute that may ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented, saying, “in matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution.”

“In this case, the Government took the opposite approach,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “It wrongfully deported one plaintiff to Guatemala, even though an Immigration Judge found he was likely to face torture there.

“Then, in clear violation of a court order, it deported six more to South Sudan, a nation the State Department considers too unsafe for all but its most critical personnel. An attentive District Court’s timely intervention only narrowly prevented a third set of unlawful removals to Libya.”

The Department of Homeland Security called the Supreme Court ruling a “major victory” for the Trump administration.

“If these activist judges had their way, aliens who are so uniquely barbaric that their own countries won’t take them back, including convicted murderers, child rapists and drug traffickers, would walk free on American streets,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLauglin said in a statement.

“Fire up the deportation planes,” she added.

Last month, the Trump administration tried to deport a group of eight men with criminal records to South Sudan that McLauglin described as “barbaric monsters.” Among them were two Cuban men. DHS said that Enrique Arias-Hierro had been convicted of homicide, armed robbery, false impersonation of an official and kidnapping, while Jose Manuel Rodriguez-Quiñones was convicted of attempted first-degree murder and drug trafficking, among other crimes. Both men had criminal histories in Florida, including Miami-Dade County.

The group of men had been stranded in Djibouti, an eastern African nation, while litigation over their third-country deportation played out in the federal courts.

Monday’s ruling could pave the way for the Trump administration to identify countries for immigrants whose countries won’t take them back or that do not regularly accept deportations, including Cubans, Venezuelans and Haitians.

Venezuela has previously paused deportations during breakdowns of diplomatic relations with the United States. Deportations to Cuba were paused for over two years during the COVID-19 pandemic and resumed after negotiations with the Biden administration. Meanwhile, the security situation in Haiti has made it difficult for the federal government to return nationals to the Caribbean country.

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