Trump urges Supreme Court to restart deportations to countries with poor human rights records

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President Donald Trump’s administration urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to remove migrants to countries other than their homeland without giving them an opportunity to raise human rights concerns.

The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal after a decision from the Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals late Wednesday effectively blocked the removals, which have been taking place since the Supreme Court sided with the administration on the issue more than a year ago.

That decision has “created substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations – including the cancellation of flights – and led to added expense, potential diplomatic issues, and the inability to remove dangerous criminals,” US Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the administration’s top appellate attorney told the high court in the new filing.

“While certain aliens may benefit from stalling their removal, the nation does not,” Sauer wrote.

The Supreme Court reviewed the policy at an earlier stage of the case last year and allowed it to continue over the dissent of the court’s three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The justices then sided with the administration again in a case involving a specific group of migrants that had been held for several weeks on a military base in Djibouti.

The administration began the policy last year as part of its broader crackdown on immigration. One of the biggest hurdles previous administrations have faced is trying to deport migrants back to their home countries who would refuse to receive them for a host of reasons, including frosty relations with the United States. Trump’s answer to that problem was to deport those migrants to some other country, even if the migrant had no ties to the destination.

The policy drew considerable scrutiny last year after immigrant rights groups revealed that one group of migrants, initially bound for South Sudan, were being detained in Djibouti . The migrants, including some from Cuba, Vietnam and Laos, were held in a converted Conex shipping container. An estimated 25,000 migrants have been removed under the policy.

At issue is the Convention Against Torture, ratified by the Senate in 1994, that generally bars deportation or extradition to countries where there is a possibility that the migrant might be tortured. The law is vague about how an administration is supposed to make that determination and what process rights are due to the migrant at issue.

In its emergency appeal on Thursday, the administration asked for an immediate “administrative” stay that would allow the flights to continue.

The Justice Department told the court in its filing that it had cancelled flights and “has had to pull nearly 150 aliens from removal flights to at least four different countries.”

The high court ordered the immigrant rights groups fighting the administration to respond by Monday afternoon.

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周四，唐纳德·特朗普总统的政府敦促最高法院允许其将移民遣返回国，而无需给他们机会提出人权方面的担忧。

周三晚些时候，位于波士顿的美国第一巡回上诉法院的一项裁决有效地阻止了驱逐行动，司法部随后提起紧急上诉。此前，最高法院一年多前在该问题上支持了政府的立场，驱逐行动一直在进行。

美国副检察长 D·约翰·绍尔（D. John Sauer）是本届政府的首席上诉律师，他在新提交给最高法院的文件中表示，该决定“给正在进行的遣返行动造成了严重的后勤问题，包括航班取消，并导致费用增加、潜在的外交问题以及无法遣返危险罪犯”。

绍尔写道：“虽然某些外国人可能从拖延遣返中受益，但国家却不会受益。”

最高法院去年在该案早期阶段审查了这项政策，并允许其继续实施，尽管最高法院的三位自由派大法官——索尼娅·索托马约尔、埃琳娜·卡根和凯坦吉·布朗·杰克逊——持反对意见。

随后，在涉及一群被关押在吉布提军事基地数周的特定移民的案件中，大法官们再次站在了政府一边。

作为其更广泛的移民打击行动的一部分，本届政府去年开始实施这项政策。以往历届政府面临的最大难题之一是，如何将移民遣返回国，而这些国家出于种种原因（包括与美国关系冷淡）会拒绝接收他们。特朗普解决这一问题的办法是将这些移民遣返回其他国家，即使他们与目的地没有任何联系。

去年，移民权益组织披露一批原本前往南苏丹的移民在吉布提被拘留，此后该政策受到了广泛关注。这些移民中包括一些来自古巴、越南和老挝的人，他们被关押在一个改装的集装箱里。据估计，已有25000名移民根据该政策被遣返。

争议的焦点在于1994年经参议院批准的《禁止酷刑公约》。该公约通常禁止将移民驱逐或引渡到可能对其施以酷刑的国家。然而，该公约对于行政部门应如何做出此类判断以及相关移民应享有哪些程序权利的规定却十分模糊。

周四，政府在紧急上诉中要求立即实施“行政”中止令，以允许航班继续进行。

司法部在提交给法院的文件中表示，他们已经取消了航班，“不得不将近 150 名外国人从遣返航班上撤回，这些航班原本要飞往至少四个不同的国家”。

最高法院命令与政府抗争的移民权利组织在周一下午之前作出回应。