The Supreme Court just gave President Trump a major boost, ruling he may remove illegal aliens to countries other than their native lands without notice.
The court reversed the ruling of a Democrat judge who tried to place constraints on Trump's power to conduct third-country removals to war-torn nations like South Sudan.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson all dissented, with Sotomayor accusing the court of "rewarding lawlessness."
"The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard," she wrote.
The dispute is one of many legal challenges brought against Trump immigration officials on due process grounds. Several of these cases have involved losses for Trump, leaving the president and his supporters exasperated with "activist" judges.
The Supreme Court's ruling is a reprieve from that streak of losses, lifting a major roadblock to Trump's mass deportation efforts.
Lawyers for the immigrants in the case, convicted criminals from countries like Cuba and Vietnam, argued they face persecution and torture in a strange, dangerous country, and a district judge ruled they must have a chance to fight their removals.
The Trump administration had said the district court's order undermined Trump's efforts to address the "worst of the worst illegal aliens."
"Those judicially created procedures are currently wreaking havoc on the third-country removal process," Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a filing. "In addition to usurping the executive's authority over immigration policy, the injunction disrupts sensitive diplomatic, foreign-policy, and national-security efforts."
The Department of Homeland Security called the Supreme Court's ruling a "victory for the safety and security of the American people."
"DHS can now execute its lawful authority and remove illegal aliens to a country willing to accept them," a statement read in part. "Fire up the deportation planes."
Despite Trump's Supreme Court win, District Judge Brian Murphy has continued to insist that some of the immigrants cannot be summarily removed to South Sudan, citing a separate order that Trump did not appeal.
The immigrants have been detained inside a converted shipping container at a U.S. military base in Djibouti, a country in East Africa near South Sudan.
The Trump administration says Murphy is out of line, and they are calling on the Supreme Court to correct him. The Justice Department even suggested the court "may consider ordering that the case be reassigned to a different district judge."
"The district court’s ruling of last night is a lawless act of defiance that, once again, disrupts sensitive diplomatic relations and slams the brakes on the executive’s lawful efforts to effectuate third-country removals,” the administration said.
