Immigrant rights organizer says Trump administration is wielding yet “another attack on human rights”
The right-wing majority Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration on Monday, June 23, clearing the way for Trump’s immigration enforcement officials to deport immigrants to countries they are not from.
“DHS can now execute its lawful authority and remove illegal aliens to a country willing to accept them,” said Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin in a celebratory statement. “Fire up the deportation planes.”
The Supreme Court’s order paused a ruling by a federal judge in Boston, who prevented eight immigrant detainees from being sent to South Sudan, which is classified by the US State Department as dangerous for travelers “due to crime, kidnapping and armed conflict.” These eight men are currently being held in a US military based in Djibouti.
The Trump administration returned to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, June 24 to ask the justices to clarify that the order applied to this group of men. The Court’s order on Monday was brief, and provided no explanation, but put a hold on a federal judge’s order saying that deportees should have “meaningful opportunity” to argue that they could be tortured, killed, or persecuted in those countries.
“This ruling gives the White House a blank check to expel migrants into uncertainty, regardless of their innocence or the risks they face,” said Michelle Ellner, of CODEPINK, an anti-war organization based in the US. “Migrants are being expelled to unfamiliar countries after fleeing conditions the US has fueled through military intervention, sanctions, and corporate exploitation. This decision doesn’t just target migrants, it strengthens a global system where mobility restrictions privilege the powerful and punish the displaced.”
In his drive to execute his crackdown on immigration, Trump has sent hundreds of immigrants to countries not their own. Most notable, these include the mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. However, the Trump administration has also sent migrants to Panama, Costa Rica, and most recently to South Sudan.
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Marco Castillo, an immigrant rights organizer based in the South Bronx and leader of Rede de Los Pueblos Transnacionales, which brings together Indigenous and immigrant groups in New York City, says this latest Supreme Court decision is “another attack on human rights.” The order will “expose immigrants to inhumane and extreme vulnerability,” and is “another attempt to terrorize our communities.”
Ana Paola Pazmiño, the executive director of Resistencia en Accion NJ, told Peoples Dispatch that those in the immigrant communities she works with “have been told [by federal agents] that they need to return back to their countries of origin, and if they don’t, they’re going to be sent anywhere that they can be deported to.”
