SC green-lights deportations: Trump admin wins key immigration battle; 8 detained in Djibouti cleared for transfer

Supreme Court on Thursday cleared way for the Trump administration to deport a group of migrants who had been held for weeks at a US military base in Djibouti, ruling in favour of the government in a closely watched case.

The unsigned order came just days after the court allowed the administration to deport certain migrants to countries other than their homeland with minimal notice. June 23 decision triggered a legal battle over whether the same policy could be applied to a specific group of eight migrants detained in Djibouti.

A federal judge in Massachusetts had ruled that the June decision did not apply to these eight migrants, citing a separate court order that the administration had not appealed. The ruling temporarily blocked their removal, prompting the administration to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court. On Thursday, the court reversed the lower court’s injunction and allowed the deportations to proceed, over the objections of two liberal justices.

The migrants, who include individuals from Cuba, Vietnam and Laos, had been diverted to Djibouti while en route to South Sudan. They were being held in a converted Conex shipping container on the base. The administration argued that the lower court’s ruling conflicted with the Supreme Court’s earlier decision, and the majority agreed.

In its order, the court stated that the June 23 decision applied to the case “in full,” and rejected the argument that the Massachusetts ruling created a separate legal shield. “Such a remedy would serve to ‘coerce’ the government into ‘compliance’ and would be unenforceable given our stay of the underlying injunction,” the court wrote.

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