Among those who could be targeted are thousands of #immigrants with final removal orders who have not been deported to their native countries because a #judge found that they might face #danger there. Others are those with deportation orders to countries such as #China or #Cuba that do not always cooperate with #deportations because of their frosty relationship to the #US.

#Trump #law #SCOTUS #rendition #immigration #DueProcess #CivilRights #HumanRights #AbuseOfPower

People being sent to countries where officials have not provided any “diplomatic assurances” that #immigrants will be safe will be informed 24 hours in advance — & in “exigent” circumstances, just 6. Those being flown to places that have offered those *assurances* could be deported with NO advance notice.

Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote in a memo to the #ICE workforce Wednesday that a #SCOTUS ruling last month had cleared the way for officers to “immediately” start sending #immigrants to “alternative” countries.

“Other leaders & countries are trying to emulate the #Bukele arrangement,” said Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, a director of Lawyers for #CivilRights, a Boston-based group that has represented #immigrants in lawsuits against the #Trump admin. Countries are increasingly “raising their hand to volunteer their incarceration facilities & to facilitate the #deportation of people,” he added.

After a different federal judge sharply limited #deportations to “third countries” — places where the immigrants have no prior ties — the #DOJ pressed #DHS ofcls to clarify their view of the judge’s decision to ensure that their legal arguments were consistent.

“My take on these emails is that DOJ leadership & DOJ litigators don’t agree on the strategy. Please keep DHS out of it,” shot back James Percival, a snr DHS adviser.

Judge #Boasberg …has rejected that interpretation of his orders & found probable cause to initiate #contempt proceedings over potential defiance of his rulings. That process has been halted for now by an appeals court.

The messages also revealed tension between #DOJ attorneys & their counterparts at #DHS as they sought to mount a defense of the #Trump admin’s #deportation policies in court.

The messages show that in the hours after #Boasberg’s ruling, #ErezReuveni repeatedly relayed to colleagues that the #immigrants covered by the judge’s order should not be turned over to #ElSalvador. And he later expressed concern that they seemed to have been handed over anyway.

In one of the newly-disclosed emails, the acting head of #DOJ’s Civil Division, Yaakov Roth, told Reuveni & other ofcls that the men were unloaded based on #legal advice given by #EmilBove.

…Many of the messages pertain to an extraordinary showdown on March 15, when #ImmigrantRights lawyers persuaded a federal judge in Washington, James #Boasberg, to order the admin to halt an in-progress #deportation [#rendition] of 130 #Venezuelans to #ElSalvador. Boasberg ordered that planes containing the men, whom #Trump deemed “alien enemies” under a wartime #law, be turned around, if necessary, & in any event that the men not be handed over to the Salvadoran govt.

The newly-released messages reinforce claims by #whistleblower #ErezReuveni that #EmilBove played a key role in a decision by #Trump admin #immigration ofcls to turn scores of #Venezuelan immigrants over to #ElSalvador despite a US judge’s #CourtOrder not to do so.

The messages show increasing alarm among #DOJ lawyers that the admin had in fact defied court orders & that some ofcls…could face #sanctions for misleading courts.

#SCOTUS’ recent moves have been cheered by the #Trump admin, which has been negotiating w/countries around the world to get them to accept deportees to help speed its efforts to remove thousands of immigrants. “Fire up the deportation planes,” a spox for the #DHS disturbingly said after the court’s ruling on third-country #deportations last month.

More recent orders lifted protections for hundreds of thousands of people who had been granted temporary protected status [#TPS] or #humanitarian parole, allowing them to be deported. And the rulings concerning so-called third-country #deportations to places other than immigrants’ home nations appeared to give little weight to #DueProcess.

Justice #ElenaKagan, who dissented previously, this time issued a concurring opinion. “I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this court has stayed,” she wrote.

Thur’s order was the latest in a series of rulings related to #immigration decided by the justices in summary fashion on what critics call the court’s shadow docket.

Some early decisions insisted on #DueProcess for immigrants before they are deported.

He added that Justice #SoniaSotomayor had made the same point in her dissent from the ruling, which Justices #ElenaKagan & #KetanjiBrownJackson joined. “The district court’s remedial orders are not properly before this court because the government has not appealed them,” she wrote.

In Thursday’s ruling, the majority rejected that distinction, paused both sets of rulings & allowed the *#deportations* to #SouthSudan.

Within hours, lawyers for the 8 men returned to the judge, Brian E. Murphy of the U.S. District Court in Boston, asking him to continue blocking the #deportations of the group.

Judge Murphy, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., denied the motion as unnecessary. He said he had issued a separate ruling last month, different from the one #SCOTUS had paused, protecting the men in Djibouti from immediate removal.

The order allows the #Trump admin to immediately send the men, who hail from countries around the world, to war-torn #SouthSudan. Neither the #US nor South Sudan has said what will happen to the men on their arrival.

Justices #SoniaSotomayor & #KetanjiBrownJackson dissented.

#SCOTUS last month paused a trial judge’s ruling that all immigrants whom the govt seeks to deport to countries other than their own must first be given a chance to show they would face risk of #torture.

"The irony of this request is not lost on anyone," #KilmarAbregoGarcia’s attorneys
wrote in a motion Friday.

His attorneys pointed to an emergency hearing Thursday in Maryland — Abrego Garcia's home state — where the government said it planned to deport him to a third country as soon as he is released from jail. Later that day, a #DOJ spox told the AP that the government intends to bring him to trial first.

On Friday, Robert E. McGuire, acting US attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, said the delay will remain in place pending further court orders.

#KilmarAbregoGarcia's legal team requested the delay, citing conflicting reports from the federal government over whether Abrego Garcia would be allowed to stay in the US while his criminal case moves through the courts.