The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to clarify its order allowing migrants to be deported to third countries after a federal judge in Boston said that eight migrants being held in the African country of Djibouti are protected from immediate removal.
In an order Monday, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy said the eight men in Djibouti remain protected from immediate removal despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, referencing another order he had issued last month that was separate from the one put on hold by the Supreme Court.
That ruling required migrants scheduled for deportation to a country other than their place of origin to have the opportunity to assert if they face “grave danger or death because of such a deportation” and gave them a “minimum of 15 days” to seek to reopen immigration proceedings challenging their potential removal.
MORE: Supreme Court allows Trump to resume speedier 3rd-country removals but Boston judge says detainees in Djibouti still protected
The eight men in question, who were convicted of violent crimes, were given notices of removal from the U.S. to the East African country of South Sudan — but after Judge Murphy blocked the administration’s attempt to deport the group to South Sudan without giving them a sufficient chance to contest their removal, the group disembarked in Djibouti, where they remain on a military base under perilous conditions.
The Supreme Court’s order on Monday allows the Trump administration to restart expedited removals of migrants to countries other than their own.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer, in the motion filed on Tuesday to the Supreme Court, called Judge Murphy’s ruling “a lawless act of defiance” that “slams the brakes on the Executive’s lawful efforts to effectuate third-country removals.”
“This Court should immediately make clear that the district court’s enforcement order has no effect, and put a swift end to the ongoing irreparable harm to the Executive Branch and its agents, who remain under baseless threat of contempt as they are forced to house dangerous criminal aliens at a military base in the Horn of Africa that now lies on the borders of a regional conflict,” Sauer said.
In his motion, Sauer argued that the May 21 order Judge Murphy issued protecting the men in Djibouti from imminent removal is “not a separate injunction” and that it “merely enforced the original April 18 injunction” that the Supreme Court stayed.
“The district court’s injunction has created an unstable and dangerous situation at the military base in Djibouti — a situation that has become all the more dangerous given current events in the Middle East,” Sauer argued.
