Even Justice Kagan Turned Down a Family's Plea to Stop Deportation, and the Fight Over Removals Goes On
Even one of the Supreme Court's most liberal justices has been willing to side with the Trump administration on deportation, a reminder that resurfaced this week as immigration remains a central issue in the midterm campaign.
Justice Elena Kagan rejected an emergency request in April 2025 from four Mexican nationals who wanted the Court to block their deportation orders so they could pursue an appeal. She denied the request without comment and without sending it to the full Court.
The four were Fabian Lagunas Espinoza, Maria Angelica Flores Ulloa and their two sons. According to their filing, the family fled Guerrero, Mexico, in 2021 after the Los Rojos drug cartel told them to leave their home within 24 hours or be killed. They had been ordered to report to immigration officials, and their lawyers argued they would face cartel violence if sent back.
The claim had already failed at every level. An immigration judge denied the family's case, the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed that decision in November 2023, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld it in February 2025.
Their attorney, LeRoy George, made a last appeal to the justices.
"Petitioners face imminent removal and have been directed to report to the immigration office on 4/17/2025, despite credible and detailed testimony and documentary evidence showing they are targets of cartel violence due to their family ties and refusal to comply with extortion demands," George wrote in the petition.
The wider deportation fight
Kagan was far from a reliable vote for the administration on immigration. She was one of three dissenters, along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, when the Court voted 6-3 last year to lift a lower court order that blocked deportations to third countries without advance notice.
That case, Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., involved migrants challenging removals to nations other than their own, including South Sudan, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Guatemala. The administration has leaned on these "third-country removals" for migrants with final deportation orders who cannot be returned home.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy of Boston, who oversaw the class action, had ruled that migrants must stay in U.S. custody until they could have a "reasonable fear interview" to explain any fear of persecution or torture. He insisted that his order did not stop President Trump from "executing removal orders to third countries," saying it "simply requires" the government to "comply with the law when carrying out" those removals.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer countered that Murphy's rulings kept the government from deporting "some of the worst of the worst illegal aliens," including a group sent toward South Sudan and held at a military base in Djibouti.
The dispute has become one of the defining legal battles of the President's immigration crackdown. White House officials have accused "activist" judges of pushing a political agenda, while the Court's majority has repeatedly let the administration press ahead.