An appeal that landed at the Supreme Court Tuesday could test the justices’ emerging concern about President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation policies and whether he is willing to defy judicial orders.
The new administration case arises from its desire to deport migrants to South Sudan and other places where they have no connection, without sufficient notice or ability to contest their removal. A US district court judge based in Boston said last week that the administration “unquestionably” violated his order when it began deportation flights and provided little time for migrants to challenge their removal to war-torn South Sudan.
Irrespective of how the justices’ respond to this latest deportation case, the controversy calls attention to developing distrust among the conservative justices regarding the Trump immigration agenda.
This is one area where his norm-busting approach, typically splitting the justices along ideological lines, has driven them together.
That was seen in the trajectory of earlier cases involving Venezuelan migrant deportations under the wartime Alien Enemies Act and, separately, in the justices’ oral arguments in a dispute related to birthright citizenship.
One of the tensest moments in that May 15 hearing came when Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked US Solicitor General D. John Sauer if he was indeed saying the administration could defy a court order.
“Did I understand you correctly to tell Justice (Elena) Kagan,” Barrett began, “that the government wanted to reserve its right to maybe not follow a Second Circuit precedent, say, in New York because you might disagree with the opinion?”