Dissenting justice warns court actions expose ‘thousands to the risk of torture or death’.

A divided Supreme Court has allowed the administration of United States President Donald Trump to restart swift removals of migrants to countries other than their homeland, lifting a court order that requires they get a chance to challenge the deportations.

The high court majority did not detail its reasoning in the brief order issued on Monday, as is typical on its emergency docket. All three liberal justices dissented.

In May, immigration officials put eight people on a plane to South Sudan, though they were diverted to a US naval base in Djibouti after a judge stepped in.

The refugees and migrants from countries including Myanmar, Vietnam and Cuba had been convicted of violent crimes in the US. Immigration officials have said that they were unable to return them quickly to their home countries.

The case comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by Trump’s administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living undocumented in the US.

In a scathing 19-page dissent, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the court’s action exposes “thousands to the risk of torture or death.”

“The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard,” she wrote in the dissent, which was joined by the other two liberal judges, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Lawyers for some of the migrants who had been on the flight to South Sudan said they would continue to press their case in court. “The ramifications of Supreme Court’s order will be horrifying,” said Trina Realmuto, the executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, meanwhile, said in a social media post that the decision was a “MAJOR win for the safety and security of the American people”.

The department did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.

District judge concerned about danger facing deportees

The Supreme Court action halts an order from US District Judge Brian E Murphy in Boston, who decided in April that people must have a chance to argue that deportation to a third country would put them in danger – even if they have otherwise exhausted their legal appeals.

He found that the May deportation flight to South Sudan violated his order and told immigration authorities to allow people to raise those concerns through their lawyers. Immigration officials housed the migrants in a converted shipping container in Djibouti, where they and the officers guarding them faced rough conditions.

The administration has reached agreements with other countries, including Panama and Costa Rica, to house immigrants because some countries do not accept US deportations. South Sudan, meanwhile, has endured repeated waves of violence since gaining independence in 2011.

Murphy’s order does not prohibit deportations to third countries. But it says migrants must have a real chance to argue they could be in serious danger of torture if sent to another country.

The third-country deportation case has been one of several legal flashpoints as the Trump administration rails against judges whose rulings have slowed the president’s policies.

Another order from Murphy, who was appointed by former Democratic President Joe Biden, resulted in the Trump administration returning a gay Guatemalan man who had been wrongly deported to Mexico, where he says he had been raped and extorted.

The man, identified in court papers as OCG, was the first person known to have been returned to US custody after deportation since the start of Trump’s second term.

The wreckage of the Bayesian superyacht is now on dry land in Sicily after being lifted from the seabed and carried on a slow final journey from the spot where it sank in a storm last summer, killing seven passengers and crew.

The yacht, which belonged to the British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, has finally been recovered in a complex $30m (£22.2m) operation to allow Italian prosecutors to inspect the wreck as part of their ongoing investigation.

Mr Lynch and his teenage daughter were among seven passengers and crew who died when the Bayesian was knocked over by sudden extreme winds and sank within minutes.

Their bodies were retrieved by divers several days later.

Other smaller vessels in the same area that day survived the storm intact, leaving experts struggling to understand why the luxury yacht was affected so badly.

At the time, prosecutors in Sicily announced a criminal inquiry into potential manslaughter and negligent shipwreck, describing its outcome as “completely unpredictable”.

They made clear that recovering the Bayesian itself would be essential.

Now the yacht is out of the water, experts for the prosecution will be able to examine the physical evidence and start to come up with some answers.

The salvage operation began in May, but was quickly struck by fresh disaster when one of the divers was killed in an underwater explosion.

The entire operation involving dozens of experts had to be paused.

The diving team was then replaced by remote-controlled submersibles for safety, delaying the process.

Fixing straps around the hull, or the main body of the vessel, was also tougher than anticipated.

But last week the salvage team, managed by TMC Maritime, finally cut the giant, 72m aluminium mast off the yacht, allowing the hull to right itself under water.

Raising it 50m to the surface was then a delicate three-day operation with regular checks for any fuel spills or other pollution.

Prosecutors wanted the remains of the superyacht kept as intact as possible.

It was only on Sunday, dangling from a giant floating crane with multiple straps beneath its belly, that the Bayesian was ready to be carried the 16km (10 miles) or so towards shore.

On Monday morning, it was lowered into a metal cradle in the port of Termini Imerese where the wreckage, now grey and battered, will be left to dry out before any formal inspection or forensic tests are conducted.

In the meantime, salvage teams will retrieve the giant mast and the rigging from the seabed and do a final sweep for any other materials that may help the enquiry.

Mr Lynch, a tech entrepreneur sometimes dubbed “Britain’s Bill Gates”, was last summer acquitted of fraud charges in the US and the trip around Sicily with family and friends was planned as a celebration.

In the early hours of 19 August his luxury yacht was anchored just offshore near the port of Porticello, when the storm hit.

There has been endless speculation about why the Bayesian sank ever since: whether doors were closed in time and what other steps the crew took and how quickly.

Three crew members including the captain are under investigation.

But the Italian prosecution team have remained tight-lipped about their work. Last year, in their only comments to press, they said they would explore whether the accident was due to human error or potential design flaws on the yacht.

“Only after analysing the wreck will we understand what happened, where the water came in, whether there was enough water to cause the ship to sink or whether some other factor was involved,” prosecutor Raffaele Cammarano stressed at the time.

An interim report last month by British maritime investigators, MAIB, found that the Bayesian – with its enormous single mast – was vulnerable to very high wind speeds.

The report suggested neither the owner not the crew were aware of this.

Statements given to its authors also suggested that all the relevant hatches and doors had been shut as the storm built.

The report was conducted for safety purposes – avoiding future disasters at sea – not for any criminal prosecution.

Now that the Bayesian has been brought ashore, MAIB experts will also get access to “verify and refine that information”, the BBC was told, and “consider all the factors that may have contributed… to the accident.”

Lawyers representing some of those killed describe this as the “most critical phase” of the investigation.

“We will finally be able to see which parts of the boat allowed water in, causing it to sink,” Mario Bellavista, a lawyer acting for the family of the Bayesian’s chef, Recaldo Thomas, told the BBC.

“We can see which hatches were open or closed, or any other points of entry for the water.”

He said the wreckage would provide “the first real evidence” for prosecutors.

As another lawyer put it, those prosecutors now need to find out “how exactly this could have happened on such an unbelievable boat”.

Iran fired missiles at the US’s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, saying it was retaliation for recent American strikes on its nuclear facilities. Qatar intercepted the missiles and said it reserves the right to respond “to this blatant aggression in accordance with international law.” No casualties were reported.