SCOTUS Hands Big Immigration Win to Trump Administration
by Chris Queen, PJ Media.com, June 23, 2025
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court has issued a big win to the Donald Trump administration. The ruling pauses an order from a lower court judge that required the administration to give illegal immigrants a warning before sending them to other countries with which they have no prior ties.
The program, called “third-country removal,” was shot down by a federal judge in May. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy blocked the administration’s attempt to deport a group of immigrants to South Sudan. Shocker: Murphy is a Joe Biden appointee. Another shocker: the three justices who dissented were Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagen, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
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“When illegal aliens commit crimes in this country, they are typically ordered removed,” wrote Solicitor General D. John Sauer in his petition to the court. “But when those crimes are especially heinous, their countries of origin are often unwilling to take them back. As a result, criminal aliens are often allowed to stay in the United States for years on end, victimizing law-abiding Americans in the meantime. The Executive Branch has taken steps to resolve this problem by removing aliens to third countries that have agreed to accept them.”
“A single federal district court, however, has stalled these efforts nationwide,” Sauer continued. “On behalf of a nationwide class of aliens with final orders of removal, the district court issued an extraordinary preliminary injunction that restrains DHS from exercising its undisputed statutory authority to remove an alien to a country not specifically identified in his removal order (i.e., a “third country”), unless DHS first satisfies an onerous set of procedures invented by the district court to assess any potential claim under the Convention Against Torture (CAT), see 8 U.S.C. 1231 note, no matter how facially implausible.”
Fortunately, the six conservative justices saw the value in allowing third-country removals. One bonus to this story: this judgment came out on Justice Clarence Thomas’ birthday. Happy Birthday, sir!
