The Trump administration may deport undocumented immigrants to countries other than their own, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled June 23.
The unsigned order reverses a lower court ruling granting unauthorized noncitizens an opportunity to demonstrate the risk of persecution, torture or even death in the event of “third country removal” by the U.S.
“Fire up the deportation planes,” responded Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security.
Tricia McLaughlin
“The Supreme Court ruling is a victory for the safety and security of the American people,” she said. “The Biden administration allowed millions of illegal aliens to flood our country, and now, the Trump administration can exercise its undisputed authority to remove these criminal illegal aliens and clean up this national security nightmare.”
McLaughlin also derided lower courts for decisions blocking the administration’s deportation efforts: “If these activist judges had their way, aliens who are so uniquely barbaric that their own countries won’t take them back, including convicted murderers, child rapists and drug traffickers, would walk free on American streets. DHS can now execute its lawful authority and remove illegal aliens to a country willing to accept them.”
While the Supreme Court decision was issued without explanation, Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor issued a scathing dissent.
“Rather than allowing our lower court colleagues to manage this high-stakes litigation with the care and attention it plainly requires, this court now intervenes to grant the government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied. I cannot join so gross an abuse of the court’s equitable discretion,” Sotomayor wrote for the minority.
Generally, federal law permits the deportation of noncitizens found to be unlawfully in the United States only to nations where they have a meaningful connection, she continued.
“In this case, the government took the opposite approach. It wrongfully deported one plaintiff to Guatemala, even though an immigration judge found he was likely to face torture there. Then, in clear violation of a court order, it deported six more to South Sudan, a nation the State Department considers too unsafe for all but its most critical personnel. An attentive District Court’s timely intervention only narrowly prevented a third set of unlawful removals to Libya.”
Related deportation actions have been just as unpopular with many Americans, according to new polling on the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
A June 11 Quinnipiac survey found 40% of registered voters approve of the president’s handling of deportations, compared to 56% who disapprove. On immigration, 43% approve and 54% disapprove of Trump’s overall performance.
Activists have been equally alarmed by the administration’s practice of “disappearing people,” nabbing them from streets, homes and workplaces and detaining or deporting them without notice.
The Supreme Court ruling on third-country deportations is being condemned as well.
Blaine Bookey
“It is appalling that the Supreme Court has, for now, greenlit the administration’s cruel and lawless actions,” said Blaine Bookey, legal director at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies. “The administration’s increased use of third-country transfers flies in the face of due process rights, the United States’ international legal obligations, and basic principles of human decency.”
The practice places more people in jeopardy and produces more chaos in society, she added.
More people will be sent to countries where they face grave danger. More families will be separated and traumatized. And more of us will be left to wonder just how far the courts will let the Trump administration go in its crusade to dismantle the fundamental right to due process enshrined in the Constitution.”
It all makes for a terrifying new reality in the U.S., said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice.
“Masked men with guns in unmarked cars. No identification. No warrant. Tearing our neighbors, co-workers and friends off the streets. No due process. Now, they will not only be kidnapped from our streets but could be deported to a dangerous third country with impunity and without due process.”
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