WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to restart swift removals of migrants to countries other than their homelands on Monday, lifting for now a court order requiring they get a chance to challenge the deportations.
The high court’s action came after immigration officials put eight people on a plane to South Sudan in May, a move that U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Boston found violated his order. The migrants from countries including Myanmar, Vietnam and Cuba had been convicted of serious crimes in the U.S. and immigration officials have said that they were unable to return them quickly to their home countries.
Authorities instead landed the plane at a U.S. naval base in Djibouti, where the migrants were housed in a converted shipping container and the officers guarding them faced rough conditions even as immigration attorneys waited for word from their clients.
The case comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by Republican President Donald Trump’s administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally.