Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order allowing the government to send refugees and immigrants to countries that are not their own without providing them a chance to contest it, even in cases where they may face persecution or torture there. For months, the Trump administration has openly defied court orders requiring that people be provided a meaningful opportunity to challenge their removal, by attempting to disappear immigrants to countries like South Sudan and Libya, which are mired in conflict and extremely dangerous, without any notice.
“It is appalling that the Supreme Court has, for now, greenlit the administration’s cruel and lawless actions,” Blaine Bookey, Legal Director at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS), said today. “The administration’s increased use of third country transfers flies in the face of due process rights, the United States’ international legal obligations, and basic principles of human decency. While the government ultimately may, and should, lose in court, this week’s order ‘reward[s] lawlessness’ by an administration that already ’feels itself unconstrained by law,’ as dissenting Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson lamented yesterday. It will embolden the administration to ramp up the cruelty in the meantime. More people will be sent to countries where they face grave danger. More families will be separated and traumatized. And more of us will be left to wonder just how far the courts will let the Trump administration go in its crusade to dismantle the fundamental right to due process enshrined in the Constitution.”
Earlier this month CGRS filed an amicus brief in this case, urging the Supreme Court not to permit transfers to third countries where people face substantial risk of persecution and torture, which constitute a “flagrant violation of domestic and international law.”
CGRS’s factsheet “Third Country Removals: Legal Protections and Compliance Concerns” outlines the legal framework, limits, and procedural safeguards for third country removals.