6 days ago
18
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
Government lawyers said a federal judge in Boston had overstepped his authority by requiring hearings before deportations to countries other than the migrants’ own.
May 27, 2025, 5:48 p.m. ET
The Trump administration on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to allow speedy deportations of migrants to countries other than their own, despite a federal judge’s ruling that they must be first allowed a “meaningful opportunity” to object.
The judge has said that the administration violated an order he entered last month in the cases of several men who were loaded on a plane after they were told they were being sent to South Sudan, a violence-plagued African country where most of them are not from. That order required that they be allowed a chance first to show that they were at risk of torture if deported to a country other than their own.
Their flight apparently landed on Wednesday in the East African nation of Djibouti, where there is an American military base, and they have apparently been held there ever since. The judge, Brian E. Murphy of the U.S. District Court in Boston, ruled that the men must be given access to a lawyer and a chance to challenge the government plan.
There were eight deportees aboard the flight to Djibouti. One is South Sudanese, and the government has said that another will be sent to Myanmar, his home country, leaving the six others in limbo. All eight have been convicted of violent crimes.
In the administration’s emergency application, the solicitor general, D. John Sauer, wrote that Judge Murphy had thwarted “the government’s ability to remove some of the worst of the worst illegal aliens.”
“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,” Mr. Sauer wrote.
