Biden-appointed judge appears to skirt SCOTUS ruling in deportations case

A federal judge blocked deportations for eight migrants Monday night, appearing to sidestep a Supreme Court order issued just hours before.

The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration earlier on Monday to move forward with quickly deporting illegal migrants to countries not specified in their removal orders. The ruling paused an injunction issued by Judge Brian Murphy, a Biden appointee, which required the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to give migrants notice and allow them to raise concerns about potential threats of torture before deporting them to a “third country.”

However, Murphy issued an order Monday night blocking the immediate removal of eight migrants currently held at a U.S. naval base in Djibouti to South Sudan.

Murphy wrote that an earlier May 21 order issued after finding the administration violated his preliminary injunction was still in effect, citing Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion.

Sotomayor suggested Murphy’s “remedial orders are not properly before this Court because the Government has not appealed them, nor sought a stay pending a forthcoming appeal.”

“All eight individuals—none of whom have final removal orders to South Sudan—are being deprived of basic procedural rights and access to protection that Congress and the Constitution require,” the migrants told Murphy in their Monday night filing. “Absent injunctive relief, these class members face imminent risk of deportation to a volatile country where they likely will face indefinite detention and other forms of torture.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Fox News Monday night to “Expect fireworks tomorrow, we hold this judge accountable for refusing to obey the Supreme Court.”

“A Boston judge halted the deportation of illegal aliens convicted of child rape and murder,” Miller wrote on X. “Finally, the Supreme Court stepped in and halted the judge’s lawless edict. Late last night, the Boston judge claimed authority to overrule the Supreme Court and defied the Court’s order.”

In her dissent, joined by justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, Sotomayor wrote that she “cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion.”

“Rather than allowing our lower court colleagues to manage this high-stakes litigation with the care and attention it plainly requires, this Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied,” Sotomayor wrote.

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