SCOTUS pauses judge’s order stopping Trump from deporting criminal aliens to “third-party” countries
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court paused a lower-court order that required President Trump’s administration to give illegal immigrants a “warning” before sending them to other countries where they
Photo credit: CNN
Before getting into this Judiciary update, we’d like to wish a happy belated birthday to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the strongest advocates we have for the Constitution. The big day was yesterday, but we missed mentioning it with all of Monday’s breaking news, most notably on Iran. How nice that his birthday coincided with a big SCOTUS win for Trump.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court paused a lower-court order that required President Trump’s administration to give illegal immigrants a “warning” (and much more so-called due process) before sending them to other countries where they have no prior ties, such as El Salvador or South Sudan.
Three guesses as to who the three are who dissented on this. Of course, you guessed: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
A Massachusetts judge who happens to be a Biden appointee, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, had attempted to end “third-party removal,” the same program that had removed the (“alleged”) Tren de Aragua members from Venezuela to a prison in El Salvador. In May, Judge Murphy blocked the administration’s deportation of a group of immigrants to South Sudan.
So, why would Trump be bothering to deport illegal aliens to third-party nations instead of simply returning them to their home countries? Wouldn’t sending them home be easier? Well, no...typically it’s because these deportees have committed such egregious crimes that their home countries won’t TAKE them back. All of the inmates at issue in this case had been CONVICTED OF CRIMES IN THE UNITED STATES that included murder, arson, kidnapping and armed robbery. To expound on that point, Solicitor General D. John Sauer said this in his petition to the High Court:
“When illegal aliens commit crimes in this country, they are typically ordered removed. But when those crimes are especially heinous, their countries of origin are often unwilling to take them back. As a result, criminal aliens are often allowed to stay in the United States for years on end, victimizing law-abiding Americans in the meantime. The Executive Branch has taken steps to resolve this problem by removing aliens to third countries that have agreed to accept them.
“A single federal district judge, however, has stalled these efforts nationwide. On behalf of a nationwide class of aliens with final orders of removal, the district court issued an extraordinary preliminary injunction that restrains [the Department of Homeland Security] from exercising its undisputed statutory authority to remove an alien to a country not specifically identified in his removal order (a “third country”), unless DHS first satisfies an onerous set of procedures invented by the district court to assess any potential claim under the Convention Against Torture (CAT)...no matter how facially implausible.
“These judicially created procedures are currently wreaking havoc on the third-party removal process,” infringing on the executive branch’s power over immigration and disrupting “sensitive diplomatic, foreign-policy and national-security efforts.”
And this: “Convincing third countries to accept some of the most undesirable aliens requires sensitive diplomacy, which involves negotiation and the balancing of other foreign-policy interests. Until recently, those efforts were working.” But Murphy’s order “has stalled these efforts nationwide.”
One would think the case would be made by just this one point Sauer made before the Court: that by law, the Executive Branch --- not the federal courts --- has primary authority over the deportation of non-citizens and the execution of removal orders. If that weren’t enough, Sauer also noted that federal law bars courts from issuing the kind of broad relief Judge Murphy had ordered here. We aren’t attorneys, but in layman’s terms, it appears Judge Murphy just screwed up all the way around.
On January 20, his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order to remove undocumented immigrants from the U.S., directing DHS to take “all appropriate actions” to remove non-citizens who were still here despite having orders to deport them. Sauer told the Court that the third-country removal process is “often the only viable option for removing” some immigrants, presumably the ones whose home countries will not accept them.
Here are more details from Sauer’s argument before the Court last month. Extremely good...
And here’s PJ Media’s update from yesterday, on SCOTUS’ decision…
BREAKING NEWS: As we were going to press, word came that Judge Murphy (a last-minute Biden appointee who’s been on the bench for all of six months) has decided to defy the Supreme Court. Maybe this will force Chief Justice Roberts to take action against rogue judges, now they’re opening rebelling against the Supreme Court. More on this tomorrow…
Here’s another decision you might not have seen. We joked yesterday about a hoax headline that almost seemed real: “Federal Judge Orders Trump to Rebuild Iran’s Nuclear Facilities.” But there was a real one, too, that was just about as Babylon Bee-worthy. In case you missed that yesterday, it was “Judge Orders Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s Release Before Trial…”
The judge actually did. Here are the details as reported by CBS News (surprisingly straightforward)…
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kilmar-abrego-garcias-release-ordered-remain-detained-ice/
Get ready for some big revelations in the next few weeks about election interference. First, you’ll recall from a couple of weeks ago that U.S. District Judge Denise Casper granted a preliminary injunction against Trump that had been sought by more than a dozen state attorneys general (all blue, surprise). They said his order to overhaul federal elections, issued in March, violated the Constitution.
Judge Casper said the issue is whether the President can mandate “documentary proof of citizenship where the authority for election requirements is in the hands of Congress.” Statutes on elections, she said, “do not require it, and the statutorily created [Election Assistance Commission] is required to go through a notice and comment period and consult with the states before implementing any changes to the federal forms for voter registration.”
Good grief. This is all because blue-state election officials don’t want to verify citizenship. But Casper wrote that she believes these states will likely succeed in their case, because the Constitution doesn’t provide the President with “any specific powers over elections.”
Justice Department attorneys maintained that the states had been motivated by an “incorrect understanding” of this order and that they had ignored words in the order when arguing against it, so much so that their arguments bore “no resemblance to the Executive Order the President actually issued.” But that didn’t move this judge.
Meanwhile, as reported at World Net Daily, state election officials in Colorado are accusing the DOJ of being on a “fishing expedition” in their effort to review all data from the 2024 election and “whatever still remains available” from 2020. These officials say it’s to try to help Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk who was convicted and sentenced to years in prison, essentially for trying to salvage vote data from 2020 after being given orders by state officials to erase it. (Trump can’t pardon her; these were state charges.)
The spin from National Public Radio was that Peters’ request was for “an unprecedented amount of election data” driven by the Justice Department’s review of “cases targeting the President’s political allies” and catering to Trump’s “desire to exert more power over state voting processes.”
Unsurprisingly, NPR called Tina Peters a “folk hero” to those who deny the 2020 election results. Never mind that it appears --- more than ever now --- she was politically targeted while Colorado officials circled the wagons.
If you have a strong stomach and want to peek inside the leftist bubble to see how the left is demonizing Peters, currently serving a NINE-YEAR sentence, here’s something especially nasty from the Colorado Sun. Again, strong stomach; you have been warned...
https://coloradosun.com/2025/06/01/littwin-trump-pardon-tina-peters-colorado/
But the WND report is a must-read. It includes details we hadn’t heard, such as that Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold sent out 30,000 postcards to non-residents telling them how to register to vote. “Make sure your voice is heard this November,” the postcards said. Griswold claimed a “formatting error” was responsible for including instructions to aliens --- including some illegal aliens --- on how to vote. WND has more on Griswold’s seeming activism...
https://www.wnd.com/2025/06/doj-investigation-puts-colorado-election-anomalies-under-magnifying/
By the way, while digging into this story, we found what looks to be a great news source, called Complete Colorado, formed, as they say on their website, to fight media bias: “We break the stories the mainstream media does not want you to hear...However, we are not a mouthpiece for the Right; we shine a light on both sides of the aisle.”
We wish them well in that endeavor.
Here’s one more election fraud report, from Wisconsin, and this is a story that will continue to pick up steam. Finally, the call for a special counsel seems likely. But for now, just read this thread from Rasmussen Reports. (Sadly, just for reporting what they have on Wisconsin election fraud, including alleged ActBlue money laundering and the 2020 election counting shut-down, they’re being accused of political gamesmanship. One comment reads, “Are you independent pollsters or MAGA grifters?…”)
https://x.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/1936812345902465525?t=JHkIfqePZXYBReC9q6KaVg&s=19
We have rogue judges trying to take over the job of the President and hamstring everything he tries to do for the good of our country.
That Colorado reporter couldn't be more biased if he tried to. Trump pardons people railroaded and its terrible, Biden's autopen pardons everyone in his last hour in office while he's at the inauguration, and that's just fine. Pardoning someone for crimes "they may have committed" is fine. Pardoning those the Dems railroaded to smear Trump in '20 is treason. This guy is an out and out liberal pretending to report the news.