The Supreme Court on Monday paused an April 18 preliminary injunction from U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, a Biden appointee, that had blocked the deportation of illegal immigrants to countries other than their own without notice. But in what Solicitor General D. John Sauer called a “lawless act of defiance,” Murphy still declined to allow the deportations to move forward based on a technicality: his view that the Supreme Court’s pause of his preliminary injunction did not apply to an order he issued on May 21 that punished the Trump administration for what Murphy saw as its violation of the original preliminary injunction.
Murphy issued an order on Monday evening that said he did not believe the Supreme Court’s ruling from earlier in the day applied to the May 21 order, even though the justices had just paused the preliminary injunction Murphy had sought to enforce with that order. The May 21 order had stopped the already-underway deportation of a group of eight criminal migrants to South Sudan, stranding them at a U.S. facility in Djibouti, where they have remained since the order.
Sauer, in his motion to the high court Tuesday, asked the justices to affirm his view that their order does not allow Murphy’s May 21 order to remain “in full force and effect,” as Murphy has claimed.
“This Court should immediately make clear that the district court’s enforcement order has no effect, and put a swift end to the ongoing irreparable harm to the Executive Branch and its agents, who remain under baseless threat of contempt as they are forced to house dangerous criminal aliens at a military base in the Horn of Africa that now lies on the borders of a regional conflict,” Sauer wrote in the motion.
Sauer claimed Murphy’s Monday ruling was “indefensible” and argued the high court’s decision blocking the April 18 preliminary injunction “effectively stayed the May 21 orders too.”
Murphy’s Monday evening ruling came after lawyers for the eight criminal illegal immigrants asked the judge to continue to block the deportation of the migrants to South Sudan, where none of them are originally from. Murphy had issued the May 21 order as a remedy to what he perceived as a violation of his preliminary injunction blocking the deportation of illegal immigrants to “third countries” by the Trump administration.
Sauer’s motion to the Supreme Court asks the justices to clarify that both of Murphy’s orders are on hold “to make clear beyond any doubt that the government can immediately proceed with the third-country removals of the criminal aliens from Djibouti.”
Trump administration officials and allies claimed Murphy defied the Supreme Court with his Monday evening order continuing to block the deportations and have vowed to hold him accountable.
White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller issued a warning on Fox News Monday evening, saying he expected “fireworks” on Tuesday “when we hold this judge accountable for refusing to obey the Supreme Court.” Mike Davis, founder of the conservative legal Article III Project and a Trump ally, called for Murphy’s impeachment and argued the judge was “openly defying a Supreme Court order.”
In his order Monday continuing to block the deportation of the group of criminal migrants to South Sudan, Murphy cited Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, which was joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, to allege his subsequent orders were not covered by the Supreme Court’s instructions.
Sotomayor claimed the “District Court’s remedial orders are not properly before this Court because the Government has not appealed them, nor sought a stay pending a forthcoming appeal.”
The unsigned majority opinion granting the stay in favor of the Trump administration did not elaborate on its reasoning and scope other than saying the April 18 preliminary injunction was “stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such writ is timely sought.”
‘FIRE UP THE DEPORTATION PLANES’: DHS WELCOMES SUPREME COURT RULING ON THIRD COUNTRIES
Lawyers for the class of illegal immigrants seeking to block their deportations to “third countries” claimed, in a response to the DOJ’s Tuesday filing, that the Trump administration “neither challenged nor sought relief from the district court’s remedial order.” The lawyers argued the high court should not recognize the remedial orders as blocked under the stay it granted on Monday, and argued doing so “would reward the government’s defiance of the district court’s orders.”
There is no timetable for the Supreme Court to respond to Sauer’s motion to clarify its Monday order.
