Rewarding Lawlessness

In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution.  In this case, the Government took the opposite approach.  It wrongfully deported one plaintiff to Guatemala, even though an Immigration Judge found he was likely to face torture there.  Then, in clear violation of a court order, it deported six more to South Sudan, a nation the State Department considers too unsafe for all but its most critical personnel.  An attentive District Court’s timely intervention only narrowly prevented a third set of unlawful removals to Libya.

Rather than allowing our lower court colleagues to manage this high-stakes litigation with the care and attention it plainly requires, this Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied.  I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion. ...

The Due Process Clause represents “the principle that ours is a government of laws, not of men, and that we submit ourselves to rulers only if under rules.”  By rewarding lawlessness, the Court once again undermines that foundational principle.  Apparently, the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in farflung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled.  That use of discretion is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable. Respectfully, but regretfully, I dissent.

-- Justice Sotomayor, with whom Justice Kagan and Justice Jackson join, dissenting, in Department of Homeland Security, et al. v D.V.D., et al., on application for stay (23 June 2025)