(Juba) – The American Supreme Court has now allowed President Donald Trump to deport people — not just to their home countries, but to pretty much any nation that will pick up the phone. Even South Sudan is now on that list, right next to Libya.
On 23 June, the court said, “Sure, why not?” in a 6–3 decision, lifting a previous order that had asked the US government to at least give people some warning before sending them off to places they have never been — like South Sudan, where “torture, war and random disappearances” are not things from ghost stories, but Tuesday afternoons.
The decision came without explanation, like when someone just eats the last chapati in the office and blames “God’s will.” However, one justice — Sonia Sotomayor — wasn’t having it.
She wrote a fiery opinion calling the whole thing a reward for “lawlessness.” She said the court was basically okay with sending people to face “violence in faraway places,” and compared it to using a machete when a spoon would do.
Back in Washington, Trump’s team celebrated the ruling like South Sudanese fans watching the Bright Stars score a last minute goal. One Homeland Security official wrote “Fire up the deportation planes” on X (the app formerly known as Twitter), and the Homeland Security boss even posted a video of Trump dancing.
What sparked this?
Well, a few unlucky souls in US custody were told out of nowhere they would be deported to South Sudan — a place where Trump’s own government once reported things like slavery, sexual abuse, kidnappings and midnight disappearances. Basically, not your ideal holiday destination.
A judge named Brian Murphy (who clearly doesn’t like surprises) was furious. He reminded government lawyers that, no, you can’t just shove people on a plane and drop them somewhere like you are delivering maize sacks to Rumbek.
To be “fair,” the government had parked some deportees in a US military base in Djibouti, while deciding what to do. The plan was to give them a “reasonable fear interview” — a fancy name for asking, “Do you think you will die if we send you there?”
But then came the usual U-turn. US officials suddenly said, “Ah, it turns out doing deportation paperwork from another continent is hard.” They blamed smog, malaria and a lack of Panadol for delays. One officer said they were stuck taking 12 medications — probably not for missing coffee, but because of poor camp conditions.
Judge Murphy, clearly unimpressed, said the government had “manufactured chaos” — something South Sudanese politicians might call “Tuesday budget meetings.”
He didn’t order them to release the migrants in Djibouti, but Trump’s people accused him of “stranding ICE agents.” You would think ICE agents had been left on a cattle camp in Pibor during rainy season, the way they were complaining.
Now that the Supreme Court has blessed the whole plan, lawyers are scrambling to stop the deportation of people who may face indefinite jail if they land in Juba. One court filing literally described South Sudan as a “volatile country” — which, to be fair, is the polite way of saying “we are not ready for extra problems.”
South Sudanese communities are watching with raised eyebrows. Already dealing with everything from food shortages to fuel hikes, they now might be handed deportees from the US — some of whom don’t even know where Wau is on the map.
With the South Sudanese Pound stuck around SSP 4,650 per $1 officially (or SSP 7,000 if you are asking your cousin with connections), adding more mouths to feed is not part of the national development plan.
Human rights groups are warning that this move sets a worrying trend. Imagine being deported to a country you have never lived in, only to end up in a cell because no one knows what to do with you — not even immigration.
As one boda boda rider in Juba put it, “We can’t even fix our own forex rate. Now we must fix America’s deportation backlog too?”
