A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration’s policy of deporting immigrants to “third countries” where they have no personal or legal ties is unlawful and must be set aside.
U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) violated due process by removing migrants to third countries without giving them proper notice or a meaningful opportunity to object. Murphy agreed to pause enforcement of his ruling for 15 days to allow the government to appeal.
The decision comes in a case that has already reached the Supreme Court, which last year temporarily sided with the Trump administration by lifting Murphy’s earlier order and allowing a deportation flight to proceed to South Sudan, a country the migrants had no connection to.
Murphy ruled that migrants have a constitutional right to know where they are being sent and to challenge that destination before removal. He said the policy “extinguishes valid challenges to third-country removal by effecting removal before those challenges can be raised.”
“These are our laws, and it is with profound gratitude for the unbelievable luck of being born in the United States of America that this Court affirms our nation’s bedrock principle: that no ‘person’ may be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” Murphy wrote.
In June, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority found that immigration officials could quickly deport migrants to third countries. Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, warning that the ruling gave the government special treatment and weakened legal protections for migrants.
Murphy said the Trump administration had repeatedly violated or attempted to violate his orders. He cited an incident last March in which at least six migrants covered by his ruling were deported to El Salvador and Mexico without being given the process required under a temporary restraining order.
“The simple reality is that nobody knows the merits of any individual class member’s claim because the government is withholding the predicate fact: the country of removal,” Murphy wrote.
Murphy, who was nominated to the bench by Joe Biden, said the DHS policy disproportionately targeted migrants who had already been granted protection from being sent back to their home countries because of fears of torture or persecution.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have said that eight men deported to South Sudan in May had criminal convictions in the United States and were under final orders of removal.
The ruling marks another legal setback for Donald Trump’s immigration agenda and sets up a likely appeal, once again placing the administration’s third-country deportation strategy before higher courts.
