Donald Trump’s administration has appealed to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to bless his effort to deport a group of migrants to South Sudan, a war-torn African country, with little notice and in express violation of a judge’s order.

The high court has already smacked down the administration’s efforts to conduct rapid deportations without due process twice now. This time, Trump’s Department of Justice is trying to persuade the justices to undermine the rule of law, with a misleading brief that is undercut both by the judicial record as well as flight-tracking data reviewed by Rolling Stone.

A Massachusetts federal judge, Brian Murphy, previously issued an order barring the Trump administration from deporting people to third-party countries, or nations where they are not from, without a “meaningful opportunity” to demonstrate that they fear being persecuted, tortured, or killed if they were sent there. The judge also required the administration to give people at least 15 days of notice to challenge their removals.

When the Trump administration moved to deport a group of detainees to Libya, an exceedingly dangerous country, without giving them an opportunity to raise fear-based objections, the judge clarified that would violate his order. Last week, the Trump administration began the process of sending a group of men to South Sudan, another dangerous country, with less than 24 hours of notice — leading the judge to find that officials had violated his order and demand the government maintain custody of the migrants so they have an opportunity to object to being sent there.

Murphy did not demand the administration bring the men back, allowing officials to pick where to hold them as they move to comply with his order. They are currently being held at a military base in Djibouti, in east Africa.

An attorney for the men told Rolling Stone on Thursday morning that her team still had not been given phone access to their clients, one of the conditions of last week’s ruling. Editor’s picks

On Tuesday, Trump’s Justice Department bypassed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit as it filed an emergency brief at the Supreme Court. The administration argued in the brief that Murphy’s orders are causing “irreparable injury in the diplomatic, immigration, and foreign-policy spheres.”

In a brief to the Supreme Court, Trump’s Solicitor General John Sauer writes: “Having slammed on the brakes while these aliens were literally mid-flight — thus forcing the government to detain them at a military base in Djibouti not designed or equipped to hold such criminals — the court then retroactively ‘clarified’ its injunction to impose an additional set of intrusive and onerous procedures on DHS. As a result, 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.

Sauer, who previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer, represents the current situation as a burden put upon the government by Judge Murphy, and dubiously claims that the judge forced the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detain the men in Djibouti. In reality, as Judge Murphy wrote in a memorandum this week, “this is the result Defendants asked for.” His order had left “the practicalities of compliance to defendants’ discretion.”

“I honestly think that this is a sanctionable brief,” immigration attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on X on Tuesday. “It falsely claims that the District Court ‘forc[ed] the government to detain [8 men] at a military base in Djibouti.’ This is false. As Judge Murphy himself repeatedly emphasized, it was the DOJ that requested the option of holding them overseas!” Related Content

The government’s description of the sequence of events is further undermined by Rolling Stone’s real-time tracking of the Gulfstream V jet that flew the men from Texas to Djibouti last week. (The flight was first noticed by former reporter and flight attendant Gillian Brockell, who saw that a plane that had previously flown high-level government missions took off from Harlingen, Texas, late Tuesday morning, at approximately the same time the men’s lawyers found out from their clients that they would be sent to South Sudan.)

Judge Murphy held two emergency hearings last Tuesday night and Wednesday mid-day, responding to the migrants’ lawyers’ emergency filing notifying the court that their clients had been given less than 24 hours notice that they would be deported to South Sudan.

During the hastily-convened hearing on Tuesday night, Judge Murphy ordered the Justice Department to find out where the plane was and tell everyone involved in the flight that they could face criminal contempt sanctions if his earlier order barring rapid deportations to third-party countries wasn’t followed.

At 8:55 p.m. Tuesday night, when Judge Murphy filed his order requiring the government to maintain custody of the men, the Gulfstream V was still over the Atlantic Ocean, and the plane was closer to U.S. soil than Africa, according to Rolling Stone’s review.

We were able to follow the plane’s trajectory to a stop at Shannon Airport in Ireland at approximately 9:30 p.m. Tuesday night, presumably for refueling, where it sat for almost three hours before taking off and continuing toward Djibouti.

The plane ultimately landed at Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport, a shared military and civilian airport, at 9:54 a.m. on Wednesday morning, according to Rolling Stone’s live tracking of the flight.

Wednesday’s court hearing in the case, scheduled for 11 a.m., started late, and by the time Judge Murphy made what the Justice Department called his clarification of his injunction, some time after noon, the plane had been sitting on the Djibouti airport tarmac for over two hours, according to Rolling Stone’s tracking.

In that hearing, the plaintiffs asked for the men to be returned to the U.S. for the period of due process, according to independent law news site LawDork’s live updates of the hearing, but the judge allowed the Justice Department to offer its own “remedy” to the situation and asked DOJ attorney Drew Ensign for a suggestion.

“Any remedy should be narrowly tailored. If they weren’t given meaningful opportunity to express fear, give them that opportunity. No need to bring them back,” Ensign said, according to LawDork’s transcript.

“Are you suggesting they have a reasonable fear interview where they are now? Is that practical,” the judge asked Ensign, who replied that he would consult with his client and report back. Later in the hearing, the DOJ reported to the judge that it was in fact possible for the men to do their credible fear interviews where they were, in Djibouti, later in the hearing.

In his ruling last Wednesday, Judge Murphy wrote, “DHS, in its discretion, may elect to provide this process to the six individuals either within the United States — should it choose to return them to the United States — or abroad, if at all relevant times DHS retains custody and control over the individuals in conditions commensurate to those the individuals would be housed in were they still in DHS’s custody within the United States. This order reflects a remedy, in light of the court’s finding of a violation of its preliminary injunction, that has been narrowly tailored in accordance with principles of equity.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio filed a declaration to Murphy two days later, part of the government’s appeal, arguing that the men’s detainment in Djibouti had “negative consequences to important U.S. strategic interests, including in Libya, South Sudan and Djibouti.” Rubio claimed that Judge Murphy’s order threatened to negatively impact the relationship between the U.S. and South Sudan, making “moving humanitarian relief — food, medicine, etc. — into the region … more difficult.”

Meanwhile, humanitarian relief in South Sudan has been notably devastated by Trump’s effort to gut foreign aid.

DHS did not respond to requests for comment. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to outreach from Rolling Stone.

The Trump administration flew eight men to Djibouti, but one is a South Sudanese national and another will be deported to his home nation of Myanmar, the government said. That leaves six men subject to order for a reasonable timeframe to raise fear of torture. The men — from Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Mexico and South Sudan — were all previously convicted of violent crimes.

The plane that flew them to Djibouti is registered to two related Florida private charter companies Tannjets and Journey Aviation

Tannjets and Journey Aviation were both founded by a pilot who founded the first private airline in Uzbekistan after the fall of the Soviet Union. An executive at Journey Aviation told Rolling Stone they had no idea if their plane was involved in the South Sudan deportation flight last Wednesday.

The narrative that Judge Murphy “forced” the government to go to Djibouti began taking shape last week. On Thursday White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said “Now these illegal criminal murderers and rapists have to sit in Djibouti with our ICE agents who now have to sit there for more than two weeks. it’s truly despicable what’s happening in our court system and the president hopes that the Supreme Court will do what it needs to do” during a press conference.

Later that day, The State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce further distorted the events, saying “I would also point you to Karoline Leavitt’s remarks the hour before my briefing here, where she noted a court order required the flight to go to Djibouti” during a State Department briefing.

Civil unrest in South Sudan deteriorated to the extent that the U.S. ordered all non-emergency staff to leave the country in March. The State Department warns: “Do not travel to South Sudan due to crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.” Trending Stories Bruce Springsteen Is Under Attack by Trump. These Are All the Artists Supporting Him Trump Pardons NBA YoungBoy During Clemency Spree Red Hot Chili Peppers Ex-Guitarist Avoids Jail in Vehicular Manslaughter Plea Deal ‘Everything Could Have Been a Huge Disaster’: Nathan Fielder on Making ‘The Rehearsal’ Season 2

The department’s 2023 report on human rights practices in South Sudan found credible reports of “arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; enforced disappearance; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by security forces, opposition forces, armed militias affiliated with the government and the opposition, and ethnically based groups; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; [and] arbitrary detention.”

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Jackson, who oversees the emergency docket for appeals in the First Circuit, responded to the Trump administration’s emergency request on Wednesday, giving lawyers for the men sent to Djibouti a week to reply.

WASHINGTON — Eager to frame New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as “the leader of the Democrat Party,” the White House has taken aim at the progressive congresswoman in recent days for her calls to shutter the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and other criticisms of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.

What You Need To Know Eager to frame New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as “the leader of the Democrat Party,” the White House has taken aim at the progressive congresswoman in recent days for her calls to shutter the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and other criticisms of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda The White House press release was in response to a recent fundraising email sent out by Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign stating, among other core principles, she believes that “ICE, an agency that was just formed in 2003 during the Patriot Act era, is a rogue agency that should not exist” While calls for abolishing ICE have fallen out of fashion, Democrats have continued to decry ICE and Trump’s immigration agenda Wednesday morning’s release was published at the same time as plainclothes, masked federal agents were arresting immigrants at a federal building in lower Manhattan where immigration court hearings are held, according to a video obtained by Spectrum News

On Wednesday morning, the White House sent out an official press release slamming Ocasio-Cortez for wanting to eliminate the “agency arresting killers, rapists in New York.”

“While President Donald J. Trump, his administration, and the heroes of ICE work overtime to rid our country of criminal illegal immigrant killers, rapists, and gangbangers, top Democrats are doubling down on their call to eliminate the agency responsible for getting these animals off our streets,” the statement said.

The release was in response to a recent fundraising email sent out by Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign stating, among other core principles, she believes that “ICE, an agency that was just formed in 2003 during the Patriot Act era, is a rogue agency that should not exist.” ICE was created in 2003 after Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act of 2002, forming the Department of Homeland Security and many of the other agencies and authorities that serve as the basis of much of the post-9/11 federal domestic surveillance apparatus.

While Ocasio-Cortez was one of the most vocal proponents of the “Abolish ICE” movement during Trump’s first term, it has not been central to her rhetoric or that of other progressives in the years since. The campaign email sent this week sparked a round of condemnation from White House officials after it was highlighted by a Business Insider reporter, but it is virtually identical to one her campaign sent in January 2023.

“Unfortunately, what I think many can agree with — that we shouldn’t have a rogue law enforcement agency, and we should have one that is accountable to the people — was too easily messaged against us,” Texas Rep. Greg Casar, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told Semafor in April.

Ocasio-Cortez did not comment for this story, opting to highlight a statement from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Wendesday defending her.

“The Trump administration is right about one thing: [Ocasio-Cortez] is a leader,” the CHC wrote. “It’s like a schoolyard — the bully is afraid of the true leader. The administration’s obsession with deportation is built on lies. They don’t care about public safety — they care about hitting 1 million deportations. They’re going after farmworkers, students, community leaders and, yes, children with cancer.”

A 4-year-old U.S. citizen with cancer and her 7-year-old sibling were deported to Honduras with their mother in April.

While calls for abolishing ICE have fallen out of fashion, Democrats have continued to decry ICE and Trump’s immigration agenda. Last week, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 running mate — described the agency as “Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo,” the Nazi secret police.

In the Wednesday press release, the White House highlighted recent arrests of immigrants in New York convicted of crimes, including manslaughter and rape. Other recent arrests in New York include the detention last week of a 20-year-old Bronx high school student with no criminal record who has been shuttled to at least four different states, his lawyers and mother told Chalkbeat, and the February deportation of Bronx 19-year-old Merwil Gutiérrez to the notorious mega-prison in El Salvador that has come under international scrutiny for human rights abuses.

Ocasio-Cortez and fellow New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat — the first undocumented immigrant to serve in Congress — called Gutiérrez’s deportation an “abduction” in a statement last month, noting he also did not have a criminal record and was deported to a country the teenager originally from Venezuela had never called home. His father described the arrest to the outlet Documented as a kidnapping.

Wednesday morning’s release was published at the same time as plainclothes, masked federal agents were arresting immigrants at a federal building in lower Manhattan where immigration court hearings are held, according to a video obtained by Spectrum News. Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security immediately responded to requests for comment.

The focus on Ocasio-Cortez comes as Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, mocked the Bronx and Queens representative over the indictment of her New Jersey colleague Rep. LaMonica McIver on federal assault charges in connection to an incident at a Newark ICE facility earlier this month. McIver has denied the charges and House Democrats leadership called the prosecution “extreme, morally bankrupt and lacks any basis in law or fact.”

“Remember, just a couple weeks ago, AOC went on social media saying that if we put a finger on any of her coworkers — Congress people that were at our Newark facility — there would be consequences,” Homan said on Fox News on Tuesday night, referencing Ocasio-Cortez’s comments at the time. “Well guess what? We did it. I’m waiting on the consequences.”

By Joan Biskupic, CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst

(CNN) — An appeal that landed at the Supreme Court Tuesday could test the justices’ emerging concern about President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation policies and whether he is willing to defy judicial orders.

The new administration case arises from its desire to deport migrants to South Sudan and other places where they have no connection, without sufficient notice or ability to contest their removal. A US district court judge based in Boston said last week that the administration “unquestionably” violated his order when it began deportation flights and provided little time for migrants to challenge their removal to war-torn South Sudan.

Irrespective of how the justices’ respond to this latest deportation case, the controversy calls attention to developing distrust among the conservative justices regarding the Trump immigration agenda.

This is one area where his norm-busting approach, typically splitting the justices along ideological lines, has driven them together.

That was seen in the trajectory of earlier cases involving Venezuelan migrant deportations under the wartime Alien Enemies Act and, separately, in the justices’ oral arguments in a dispute related to birthright citizenship.

One of the tensest moments in that May 15 hearing came when Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked US Solicitor General D. John Sauer if he was indeed saying the administration could defy a court order.

“Did I understand you correctly to tell Justice (Elena) Kagan,” Barrett began, “that the government wanted to reserve its right to maybe not follow a Second Circuit precedent, say, in New York because you might disagree with the opinion?”

“Our general practice is to respect those precedents, but there are circumstances when it is not a categorial practice,” Sauer answered.

“Really?” Barrett said, leaning forward on the bench and pressing on, in search of some answer revealing adherence to court orders. She amended the hypothetical scenario to involve the high court itself.

“You would respect the opinions and judgment of the Supreme Court,” she asked, “You’re not hedging at all with respect to the precedent of this court?”

“That is correct,” Sauer said.

Barrett was not the only conservative picking up on concerns voiced by liberal Kagan or asking about Trump administration regard for Supreme Court rulings.

“I want to ask one thing about something in your brief,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said to Sauer. “You said, ‘And, of course, this Court’s decisions constitute controlling precedent throughout the nation. If this Court were to hold a challenged statute or policy unconstitutional, the government could not successfully enforce it against anyone party or not, in light of stare decisis.’ You agree with that?”

“Yes, we do,” Sauer said.

South Sudan deportations may test conservatives

The conservative-dominated Supreme Court is often aligned with Trump. The justices have endorsed many of his arguments for expanded executive branch authority. Last Thursday, the justices by their familiar 6-3 split bolstered the president’s control over independent agencies, in that case, intended to protect workers.

But when it comes to Trump’s immigration crackdown, his uncompromising moves have caused the justices to shrink back.

New fissures could emerge with Tuesday’s case testing the deportation of migrants to places where they could face persecution and without any meaningful opportunity to contest their removal. The migrants whom the administration intended to send to South Sudan are now being held at a US military base in Djibouti. The migrants are from multiple countries, including Vietnam, Mexico, and Laos, and all have criminal records, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

US District Court Judge Brian Murphy, who last week said the administration had violated his order when it undertook the deportation flight, on Monday reiterated his stance that the detainees are owed due process. “To be clear,” he said, “the Court recognizes that the class members at issue here have criminal histories. But that does not change due process.”

In the administration’s filing to the Supreme Court Tuesday, Sauer contended the administration had fulfilled the requirements of a Department of Homeland Security policy for such third-country deportations.

Challenging Murphy’s action, he wrote, “The United States has been put to the intolerable choice of holding these aliens for additional proceeding at a military facility on foreign soil – where each day their continued confinement risks grave harm to American foreign policy – or bringing these convicted criminals back to America.”

The court’s response to the multitude of Trump cases arising over his many executive orders has been varied, defying any throughline. Even in the immigration sphere, Trump has on occasion prevailed. On May 19, for example, the court allowed him to lift the Biden administration’s temporary humanitarian protection for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living and working in the US. Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Abrego Garcia case undermined justices’ trust

Yet Trump’s drive to swiftly deport migrants deemed dangerous without the requisite due process of law has plainly fueled distrust of the administration across the federal judiciary.

At the Supreme Court, the justices’ confidence in Trump has been additionally undermined by the administration’s stalling on the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador in mid-March and sent to a brutal prison.

The justices on April 10 ordered the administration to “facilitate” the Salvadoran national’s return to the US. He is still not home.

In a more recent detainee case, on May 16, the Supreme Court majority referred to Abrego Garcia as it expressed new wariness – and a new consensus – on Trump’s use of 18th century wartime law for deportations.

The first time the justices weighed in on a case involving Trump’s effort to invoke the Alien Enemies Act against Venezuelan migrants accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang, on April 7, the justices divided bitterly.

Chief Justice John Roberts and most of the conservatives clashed with the liberals, who warned that the majority’s decision largely favoring the administration failed to account for the “grave harm” the alleged Venezuelan gang members faced if deported to a Salvadoran prison as Trump wanted.

“The Government’s conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law,” the liberal justices wrote. “That a majority of this Court now rewards the Government for its behavior … is indefensible. We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this.”

But as Trump has accelerated his deportation tactics, the court’s votes on the Alien Enemies Act have shifted. And on May 16, a new majority of liberal and conservative justices voiced fears that migrants would be deported without sufficient due process.

It was becoming evident that the Trump team was only grudgingly complying, if at all, with the court’s earlier order that the Alien Enemies Act required due process. Lawyers for detainees said they were given scant notification and hasty deadlines for challenging their cases.

Lawyers for a group of Venezuelan migrants being held in a north Texas detention center sought an emergency order to ensure they would not be rushed out of the country; the justices responded by imposing a brief freeze in the early morning of April 19 on deportations.

After taking more time to review the situation, the court on May 16 extended the freeze and ordered a lower court hearing on whether Trump was lawfully invoking the Alien Enemies Act – a measure that has been used only three times since the country’s founding and only during wartime.

“Evidence now in the record (although not all before us on April 18) suggests that the Government had in fact taken steps on the afternoon of April 18 toward removing detainees under the AEA – including transporting them from their detention facility to an airport and later returning them to the facility,” the justices said in an unsigned opinion joined by conservatives and liberals.

Referring to the court majority’s April 19 middle-of-the-night order preventing those deportations, the justices added, “Had the detainees been removed from the United States to the custody of a foreign sovereign on April 19, the Government may have argued, as it has previously argued, that no U.S. court had jurisdiction to order relief.”

To underscore that point, the majority referred to the Abrego Garcia case as evidence that the administration might claim it could not return detainees wrongly deported. (Only Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from that May 16 order suspending use of the Alien Enemies Act.)

Nationwide injunctions at issue in birthright citizenship case

Perhaps the most important court test in these early months of Trump’s second presidency will be resolution of the dispute over injunctions preventing Trump from ending birthright citizenship for babies born in the US to undocumented people or those with temporary status.

The right dates to the 1868 ratification of the 14th Amendment and has been reinforced by Supreme Court precedent going back to 1898.

The legal issue in the case heard May 15 is not the bottom-line constitutionality of Trump’s move to erase the birthright guarantee but rather the method lower court judges have used to temporarily block Trump’s order signed on his first day back in office.

US district court judges have employed “nationwide injunctions,” under which a single judge blocks enforcement of a challenged policy not only in the judge’s district but throughout the country. Trump wants the injunctions narrowed to cover only the individual parties to a lawsuit in a specific district.

Some justices have in the past suggested lower court judges have exceeded their authority with such sweeping injunctions. But Trump may be forcing some of them to rethink that view because of the move to end more than 150 years of automatic birthright citizenship.

“Let’s just assume you’re dead wrong,” about the validity of Trump’s executive order, Kagan told Sauer. “Does every single person that is affected by this EO have to bring their own suit? Are their alternatives? How long does it take? How do we get the result that there is a single rule of citizenship that is the rule that we’ve historically applied rather than the rule that the EO would have us do?”

Conservative justice Neil Gorsuch also questioned whether “patchwork problems,” such as babies born in the US to undocumented migrants having varying citizenship rights depending on the state – could “justify broader relief.”

The remarks reflected the larger dilemma for a court that itself has pushed boundaries. Some Trump positions play to the justices’ interests; but some are so extreme that they rattle the justices’ own presumptions.

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President Donald Trump ‘s administration asked the US Supreme Court on Tuesday to intervene in its effort to rapidly deport migrants to countries other than their own without the opportunity to raise claims that they fear being persecuted, tortured or killed there.The Justice Department requested that the justices lift Boston-based US District Judge Brian Murphy’s nationwide injunction requiring that migrants be given the chance to seek legal relief from deportation before they are sent to so-called “third countries,” while litigation continues in the case.The administration’s filing represents its latest trip to the nation’s highest judicial body as it seeks a freer hand to pursue Trump ‘s crackdown on immigration and contest lower court decisions that have impeded the Republican president’s policies.The administration said Murphy’s injunction is preventing potentially thousands of pending deportations.(Join our ETNRI WhatsApp channel for all the latest updates)The dispute arose after the Department of Homeland Security moved in February to determine if people granted protections against being removed to their home countries could be re-detained and sent to a third country.Immigrant rights groups mounted a class action lawsuit on behalf of a group of migrants seeking to prevent rapid deportation to newly identified third countries without notice and a chance to assert the harms they could face.In March, the administration issued guidance providing that if a third country has given credible diplomatic assurance that it will not persecute or torture migrants, individuals may be deported there “without the need for further procedures.”Without such assurance, if the migrant expresses fear of removal to that country, US authorities would assess the likelihood of persecution or torture, possibly referring the person to an immigration court, according to the guidance.Murphy issued a preliminary injunction in April, finding that the administration’s policy of “executing third-country removals without providing notice and a meaningful opportunity to present fear-based claims” likely violates due process protections under US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. Due process protections generally require the government to provide notice and an opportunity for a hearing before taking certain adverse actions.Murphy said that the Supreme Court, Congress, “common sense” and “basic decency” all require migrants to be given adequate due process.The Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals on May 16 declined to put Murphy’s decision on hold.The administration has said that its policy complies with due process requirements and that judge’s injunction undermines the president’s “broad authority” over immigration.As with previous cases challenging Trump’s far-reaching executive actions and initiatives, the case raised further questions over whether the administration is defying court orders. Murphy on May 21 ruled that the administration had violated his court order by attempting to deport migrants to South Sudan.

Donald Trump, Brian Murphy, Migrants

The Trump administration petitioned the Supreme Court Tuesday to overturn a lower court order blocking deportations of criminal migrants to South Sudan, and other so-called “third countries,” without adequate due process.

“This case addresses the government’s ability to remove some of the worst of the worst illegal immigrants,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the emergency appeal to the high court. “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.”

US District Judge Brian Murphy, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, blocked the Trump administration in March from deporting migrants to countries where they do not originate from – “third countries” – without first offering the targets for deportation written notice and a chance to object to their removal.

Murphy, a Biden-appointed judge, blocked the Trump administration from deporting migrants to third countries without adequate due process. Alliance for Justice

Last week, Murphy determined that the administration “unquestionably” violated his court order when it put eight migrants with violent criminal convictions onto a flight to war-torn South Sudan — and may have committed criminal contempt.

“This Court should stay the district court’s injunction,” Sauer asked the Supreme Court. “The Court should also enter an immediate administrative stay of the district court’s injunction pending its consideration of this application.”

Sauer argued that securing third countries, such as South Sudan, to accept “some of the most undesirable aliens” is a delicate process – which is being thwarted by lower courts.

The process “requires sensitive diplomacy, which involves negotiation and the balancing of other foreign-policy interests,” the solicitor general wrote, noting that “until recently, those efforts were working.”

“Just last week, the government was in the process of removing a group of criminal aliens who had been in the country for years or decades after receiving final orders of removal, despite having committed horrific crimes,” Sauer continued. “These aliens include one who was convicted of sexually abusing a child victim for the better part of a decade, beginning when the victim was seven years old. Another was convicted of sexually abusing a mentally handicapped woman with the mental capacity of a three-year-old. At least two others were convicted of murder.”

Only one of the eight migrants Trump attempted to deport to South Sudan was originally from the African nation.

“All these aliens have already received extensive legal process. All were tried and convicted in a criminal court, with all the process and protections afforded to criminal defendants. All were adjudicated removable by an immigration judge. A single federal district court, however, has stalled these efforts nationwide.”

Sauer further charged that Murphy’s ruling usurps the president’s “authority over immigration policy” and “disrupts sensitive diplomatic, foreign-policy, and national-security efforts.”

In a separate filing, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned Murphy on Friday that his order has already caused “significant and irreparable” harm to US foreign policy.

Trump has expressed frustration with lower courts blocking his deportation plans. Getty Images

The eight migrants Murphy prevented the Trump administration from sending to South Sudan are currently being held in Djibouti, a small country on the Horn of Africa where the US has a military base.

Murphy claims the men – whom the White House has described as “monstrous and barbaric” – were not given a “meaningful opportunity” to object that the deportation could put them in danger.

Trump has cut deals with several third countries during his second term, including El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama, to take in deported migrants that can’t be sent back to their home countries.