May 27 (UPI) — The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to make it easier for officials to deport convicted criminals to South Sudan and other countries that are not their nations of origin.
“The United States is facing a crisis of illegal immigration, in no small part because many aliens most deserving of removal are often the hardest to remove,” the Department of Justice told the high court, in its request to block an injunction issued last week by Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy.
Murphy ordered immigrants be given at least ten days to bring claims that deportation could risk of torture, persecution or death.
The judge also ordered the administration to maintain custody of migrants, being deported to South Sudan and other third-party countries, in the event the court finds their removal illegal and orders them returned to the United States.
Murphy said the administration violated his previous order, issued in March, when it flew eight migrants to South Sudan last week. The men are currently being held at a U.S. facility in Djibouti.
“Plaintiffs are simply asking to be told they are going to be deported to a new country before they are taken to such a country, and be given an opportunity to explain why such a deportation will likely result in their persecution, torture and/or death,” Murphy wrote last month.
“The Trump administration removed dangerous criminal illegal aliens from America in full compliance with all court orders,” the White House responded in a statement last week. “We are confident in the legality of our actions and do not apologize for acting to protect the American people.”
In the administration’s Supreme Court filing, Solicitor General D. John Sauer said Judge Murphy has no authority to force “an onerous set of procedures” on the government.
“Those judicially created procedures are currently wreaking havoc on the third-country removal process. In addition to usurping the Executive’s authority over immigration policy, the injunction disrupts sensitive diplomatic, foreign-policy and national security efforts,” Sauer added, as the Trump administration defended the South Sudan deportations.
“The United States has been put to the intolerable choice of holding these aliens for additional proceedings at a military facility on foreign soil — where each day of their continued confinement risks grave harm to American foreign policy — or bringing these convicted criminals back to America.”
On Monday, Murphy said he would not reconsider his order.
“It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder,” he wrote, “and more logistically cumbersome than defendants anticipated.”
