Supreme Court allows Trump to deport migrants held in Djibouti to South Sudan

The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the Trump administration to deport to South Sudan a group of migrants that have been held for weeks on a military base in Djibouti.

The high court’s unsigned order came days after a majority of justices allowed the administration to deport certain migrants to countries other than their homeland with little notice. But that June 23 decision kicked off a legal skirmish about the specific group of migrants being held in Djibouti.

A lower court had put their removal back on hold, prompting the Trump administration to race up to the Supreme Court. The court’s decision Thursday sided with the administration, over the dissent of two liberal justices, and allowed officials to remove the migrants at issue to South Sudan.

The Supreme Court said that its earlier decision applied the lower court’s actions “in full.”

A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that the Supreme Court’s decision last month didn’t apply to eight migrants held in Djibouti because their court-ordered process was required by a separate ruling the administration never appealed.