SCOTUS Hands Trump a Win on Deportations

The Supreme Court on Tuesday let President Trump's administration continue deporting people to countries other than their own for now, while the justices consider whether the policy is legal. The high court said it will hear arguments in December on the policy, the AP reports. Lower courts found migrants must have a meaningful chance to object before being sent to countries where they have no ties. The emergency ruling was unsigned, but the court's three liberal justices said they would not have allowed the administration to resume the rapid deportations, reports the New York Times.

Federal attorneys said the lower-court decision forced the cancellation of a deportation flight carrying about 70 people bound for three countries. The justices previously allowed the deportation flights, a core Trump administration policy, to temporarily continue when the case came before them last year. Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported some 25,000 people to more than two dozen countries, including Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, Costa Rica, and Guyana.

• Trump's administration has said that it sends people with final deportation orders to third countries when they can't be returned to their homelands or their native countries won't accept them, including those who have criminal convictions. Solicitor General D. John Sauer called the program "an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens."
• Those governments provide assurances that people won't be persecuted or tortured, federal attorneys said. But some migrants have nevertheless found themselves imprisoned in countries they'd never heard of before their arrivals. Some also face serious safety risks and are left with little choice except to return to the home countries they were fleeing.
• In a brief, lawyers for a group of immigrants said the administration has ignored "the significant harm resulting from deporting thousands of longtime US residents, many with no criminal history, to third countries without regard to the persecution or torture they face there," per the Times.