The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily lifted a lower court order that had required the Trump administration to give migrants the chance to challenge their deportation to a country other than their nation of origin, clearing the way for resumption of such removals and prompting a strongly worded dissent from the three liberal justices.
The conservative majority behind the ruling did not offer a rationale for the order, but said that the preliminary injunction handed down by a district court judge in April is stayed, pending appeal.
In a blistering dissent, Sotomayor wrote that the ruling exposes “thousands to the risk of torture or death” and comes down on the side of the Trump administration even though it had violated the lower court’s order. Sotomayor was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson
“The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard,” she wrote in her dissent.
“Apparently,” she continued, “the court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in farflung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled. That use of discretion is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.”