A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration's policy of removing illegal immigrants to countries where they have no ties is unlawful and "must be set aside." U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy, a Biden appointee, issued the ruling in a case that has already traveled to the Supreme Court and back.
Murphy agreed to suspend his decision for 15 days to give the government time to appeal.
The ruling targets the Department of Homeland Security's practice of deporting certain illegal immigrants to "third countries," nations other than their country of origin. Murphy argued that migrants challenging the policy have a right to "meaningful notice" and a chance to object before being sent to a third country. He accused the administration of withholding key information from deportees.
The simple reality is that nobody knows the merits of any individual class member's claim because (administration officials) are withholding the predicate fact: the country of removal.
This is not Murphy's first attempt to shut down the policy, Newsmax reported. The Supreme Court ruled in the administration's favor last year, pausing Murphy's previous decision and clearing the way for a flight carrying several migrants to complete its trip to South Sudan. In June, the Court's conservative majority found that immigration officials can quickly deport people to third countries. Only liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, arguing the ruling gave the government special treatment.
So the Supreme Court already weighed in. The conservative majority already sided with the administration. And yet here we are again, with the same district judge issuing functionally the same kind of order the highest court in the land already set aside.
Murphy also accused the administration of repeatedly violating, or attempting to violate, his orders. He pointed to an incident last March when the Defense Department deported at least six individuals to El Salvador and Mexico without providing process required under a temporary restraining order he had issued.
Lost in the procedural back-and-forth is a basic question: who exactly is being removed?
The eight men sent to South Sudan in May had been convicted of crimes in the United States. They had final orders of removal. ICE officials confirmed both facts. These were not ambiguous cases. These were convicted criminals whom immigration courts had already ordered out of the country.
Murphy framed the policy as targeting immigrants "who were granted protection from being sent back to their home countries, where they feared being tortured or persecuted in other ways." That framing does heavy lifting. It transforms convicted criminals with final removal orders into sympathetic figures caught in a bureaucratic dragnet. The judge's own ruling acknowledges these protections exist for their home countries. It does not explain why convicted criminals should therefore remain in the United States indefinitely because no sufficiently comfortable third-country option has been arranged to their satisfaction.
Murphy closed his ruling with language that read less like a judicial opinion and more like a commencement speech:
These are our laws, and it is with profound gratitude for the unbelievable luck of being born in the United States of America that this Court affirms these and our nation's bedrock principle: that no 'person' in this country may be 'deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.'
It's a stirring sentiment. It's also a familiar one. Federal judges who oppose the administration's immigration enforcement have developed a habit of wrapping their rulings in the broadest possible constitutional language, as if deporting a convicted criminal to a country other than his birthplace is morally equivalent to stripping an American citizen of fundamental rights.
The pattern is straightforward:
It is not judicial review. It is judicial attrition. The goal is not to win on the merits. It is to slow enforcement to a crawl, creating enough procedural friction that the policy becomes unworkable regardless of what the Supreme Court says.
The 15-day suspension gives the administration a narrow window to appeal. Given the Supreme Court's track record on this exact policy, the administration has every reason to expect a favorable outcome at the appellate level. The conservative majority has already signaled clearly where it stands.
But every appeal takes time. Every temporary restraining order buys weeks or months. Every new ruling from a sympathetic district court resets the clock. That is the strategy, and everyone involved knows it.
Meanwhile, convicted criminals with final orders of removal remain in the country. The process is the punishment, and it's Americans who serve the sentence.