WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court cleared the way on Monday for President Donald Trump`s administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face, handing him another victory in his aggressive pursuit of mass deportations.

In an action that prompted a sharp dissent from its three liberal justices, the court granted the administration`s request to lift a judicial order requiring that migrants set for deportation to so-called `third countries` get a `meaningful opportunity` to tell US officials they are atrisk of torture at their new destination, while a legal challenge plays out. Boston-based US District Judge Brian Murphy had issued the order on April 18.

The Supreme Court`s brief order was unsigned and offered no reasoning, as is common when it decides emergency requests. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by the two other liberal justices, called the decision a `gross abuse` of the court`s power.

`Apparently, the court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in far-flung locales more palat-able than the remote possibility that a district court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled,` Sotomayor wrote.

Sotomayor called the court`s action `as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.` Murphy had found that the administration`s policy of `executing third-country removals without providing notice and a meaningful opportunity to present fear-based claims` likely violates the US Constitution`s due process protections. Due process generallyrequires the government to provide notice and an opportunity for a hearing before taking certain adverse actions.

After the Department of Homeland Security moved in February to step up rapid deportations to third countries, immigrant rights groups filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of a group of migrants seeking to prevent their removal to such places without notice and to gain a chance to assert the harms they could face.

Murphy on May 21 found the Trump administration violated his order requiring additional stepsbefore attempting to send a group of migrants to politically unstable South Sudan, which the US State Department has urged Americans to avoid `due to crime, kidnapping and armed conflict.` The judge`s intervention prompted the US government to keep the migrants at a military base in Djibouti.

Monday`s Supreme Court decision applied to Murphy`s April 18 injunction. Hours later, Murphy in a court order made clear that it did not affect his May 21 decision concerning the US attempt to rapidly deport the migrants to South Sudan.

That order, Murphy said, `remainsin full force and effect.` Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which helps represent the plaintiffs, called the ramifications of the court`s action `horrifying, stripping away `critical due process protections that have been protecting our class members from torture and death.` The administration told the Supreme Court that its third-country policy already complied with due process and is critical for removing migrants who commit crimes because their countries of origin are often unwilling to take them back.-Reuters