By Andrew Chung
(Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s administration accused a federal judge on Tuesday of defying the U.S. Supreme Court’s authority, escalating a fight over a group of eight migrants who it had sought to rapidly deport to politically unstable South Sudan.
In a filing to the Supreme Court, the Justice Department said U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy showed “unprecedented defiance” by ignoring Monday’s decision by the justices that let the administration resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face.
Monday’s decision lifted the Boston-based judge’s April 18 injunction requiring that migrants set for deportation to so-called “third countries” get a “meaningful opportunity” to tell U.S. officials they are at risk of torture at their new destination.
It was the latest legal victory for Trump at the Supreme Court in his aggressive pursuit of mass deportations. The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices dissented. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority.
After the Supreme Court’s decision, Murphy issued an order clarifying that its action did not apply to the judge’s separate May 21 decision that the administration violated his injunction in attempting to send the migrants to South Sudan. The U.S. State Department has urged Americans to avoid the African nation “due to crime, kidnapping and armed conflict.”
Murphy’s May 21 order prompted the U.S. government to keep the migrants at a military base in Djibouti. Murphy also clarified at the time that non-citizens must be given at least 10 days to raise a claim that they fear for their safety.
The Justice Department urged the Supreme Court on Tuesday to clarify that its order lifting Murphy’s injunction also applies to the May 21 decision concerning South Sudan.
“The district court’s ruling of (Monday) night is a lawless act of defiance that, once again, disrupts sensitive diplomatic relations and slams the brakes on the executive’s lawful efforts to effectuate third-country removals,” the Justice Department wrote in its filing.
The Justice Department said its agents are being “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.”
The administration has said its third-country policy is critical for removing migrants who commit crimes because their countries of origin are often unwilling to take them back.
The escalating dispute comes as the administration itself has been accused of violating judicial orders, including in the third-country deportation litigation.
Liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent on Monday that in sending migrants to South Sudan, and in another instance four others to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and on to El Salvador, the administration “openly flouted two court orders” issued by Murphy.
Sotomayor also pointed to separate litigation over Trump’s invocation of an 18th century law historically used only in wartime to justify deportations – a legal dispute in which questions have been raised about the administration’s compliance with an order issued by a judge in that case.
“This is not the first time the court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,” Sotomayor wrote. “Yet each time this court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.”
Murphy found that the administration’s policy of “executing third-country removals without providing notice and a meaningful opportunity to present fear-based claims” likely violates the U.S. Constitution’s due process protections. Due process generally requires the government to provide notice and an opportunity for a hearing before taking certain adverse actions.
Lawyers representing the migrants in a class action lawsuit asked the Supreme Court to reject the administration’s latest request. The administration wants to “deport these men to South Sudan with no process at all,” the lawyers said.
“The lives and safety of eight members of the nationally certified class in this case are at imminent risk,” they added.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
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