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Friday, July 4, 2025

U.S. Supreme Court sanctions Trump’s deportation of migrants to war-torn South Sudan

The U.S. and South Sudan authorities have not disclosed what will happen to the men upon their arrival in the African nation.

• July 4, 2025
Unrest in South Sudan (Credit: Foreign Policy)
war in South Sudan (Credit: Foreign Policy)

The U.S. Supreme Court has given President Donald Trump’s administration the green light to deport eight immigrants held at an American military base in Djibouti to war-torn South Sudan.

The immigrants, who have been held under guard for more than a month, are mainly from Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, Laos, Cuba, and Myanmar.

They have been convicted of serious crimes in the U.S. and also detained at Camp Lemonnier, a military base, ever since.

They spent almost all their time inside a modular, air-conditioned container, which the military typically uses as a conference room, according to a New York Times report.

The court gave the order on Thursday after its conservative majority last month decided that immigration officials can quickly deport people to countries to which they have no connection.

The order paused a district judge’s earlier ruling that immigrants being sent to third countries must first be allowed to prove they would face torture, persecution, or death if they were sent there.

An administration official said it would promptly send the men to the war-torn nation.

The U.S. and South Sudan authorities have not disclosed what will happen to the men upon their arrival. It is the second time that the court will rule in the case.

Last month, the court paused a trial judge’s order that had barred the administration from deporting migrants to countries other than their own unless they had a chance to argue that they would face torture.

Amid the development, lawyers for the eight men rushed back to the trial judge, who blocked their removal again.

One of the lawyers for the eight men and executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, Trina Realmuto, said that the eight men could “face perilous conditions, and potentially immediate detention, upon arrival”.

In May this year, Mr Trump’s government loaded eight men on a plane said to be headed to South Sudan, a violence-plagued African country where only one held citizenship.

But judge Brian Murphy of the U.S. District Court in Boston intervened, and their flight landed instead in the East African nation of Djibouti.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, welcomed Thursday’s ruling.

“These sickos will be in South Sudan by Independence Day,” she said.

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