The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Donald Trump's administration can deport eight migrants to South Sudan, a country that the migrants have no ties to and that is embroiled in a conflict that has displaced 13 million people since 2023.
The order was issued after the Trump administration appealed a lower court order preventing them from removing "any alien" to a country "not explicitly provided for on the alien’s order of removal."
The order also split the liberal wing of the court. Justice Elena Kagan, who dissented in a previous order in the case, concurred with the court's majority opinion this time.
"I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this court has stayed,” Kagan wrote.
Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
"What the Government wants to do, concretely, is send the eight noncitizens it illegally removed from the United States from Djibouti to South Sudan, where they will be turned over to the local authorities without regard for the likelihood that they will face torture or death," Sotomayor wrote.
"The Court’s continued refusal to justify its extraordinary decisions in this case, even as it faults lower courts for failing properly to divine their import, is indefensible," Sotomayor continued.