For the past several months, the Trump administration has been trying to deport immigrants to countries they are not from – despite an April 2025 federal ruling that had blocked the White House from doing so.

A divided Supreme Court decided on June 23, in a brief emergency order, that the Trump administration can, for now, legally deport immigrants to countries they were not born in – known as “third countries” – without giving them time to contest their destination. The third countries that President Donald Trump has recently prioritized, including El Salvador, South Sudan and Libya, are known for being dangerous places with weak rule of law and routine human rights violations.

The 6-3 decision did not specify a legal rationale for the ruling. The court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all dissented.

“Apparently, 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 powers when it ordered the government provide notice to the targeted migrants,” Sotomayor wrote in a 19-page dissent, joined by Kagan and Brown Jackson.

Understanding this legal case

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court at the end of May to allow the rapid deportation of eight men who were convicted of crimes to South Sudan. Only one of those immigrants is from South Sudan, a politically unstable country in northeastern Africa. The rest are from Cuba, Mexico, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Brian Murphy, a federal judge in Massachusetts, had blocked those immigrants’ deportation to South Sudan on May 21, saying that this move violated his April 2025 court order. In that ruling, he stated that people being deported to third countries should have time to contest their destination if it might put them in danger.

The flight to South Sudan was rerouted to an American........

© CounterPunch