Politics
Supreme Court Rules Immigrants Must Land Before They Can Explain Why They Cannot Land
By Mor Michael, . BSN Network. Satire.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Trump administration may deport migrants to countries with which they have no prior connection, no family, no language, no legal status, and, in some cases, no confirmed arrangement, before those migrants have had any opportunity to explain why this might be a problem.
This is the second time the Court has reached this conclusion. The first time, lower courts reinstated the requirement that people be told where they are going before being sent there. The Supreme Court found this requirement, on reflection, unnecessary both times.
The policy, which the administration has called "third country" removal, allows the government to redirect deportees to nations that agreed, for reasons that remain their own business, to accept them. The migrants in question did not agree. They were not asked. The Court has now confirmed, twice, that this sequence is constitutional.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, described the due process concern as "premature," a word that carries different weight when the process in question is a one-way international flight.
The administration celebrated the ruling as a decisive victory for border enforcement, national sovereignty, and the principle that bureaucratic efficiency should not be slowed by the people the bureaucracy is processing.
Stephen Miller, who has described the deportation program as "a elegant pipeline with a very clean exit," said in a statement that the ruling confirms America's right to "resolve immigration cases at the speed of governance rather than the speed of litigation," a distinction he did not elaborate on, presumably because elaborating on it would have explained it.
Critics, including the ACLU and several immigration law organizations, noted that the ruling creates a situation in which a person's only avenue for contesting removal to a country where they may face persecution is to contest it from inside that country, using a legal system they are not a party to, in a language they may not speak, regarding an immigration status they do not have.
The administration has not addressed this sequence directly. It has described the program as "orderly."
Lower courts had, on two separate occasions, ruled that migrants must be given a chance to raise objections before deportation rather than after, on the theory that deportation is the thing the objection is supposed to precede. The Supreme Court disagreed both times, finding that the lower courts had interpreted "before" too liberally.
The migrants currently subject to the policy are from a range of countries. The third countries accepting them are, according to court documents, "to be confirmed on a rolling basis."
A senior DHS official, speaking on background, said the agency was "committed to transparency" and would notify deportees of their destination "at the earliest operationally convenient moment," which the official declined to define further, though she did confirm it would be after takeoff.
The ruling does not affect migrants who can prove a connection to the third country before departure. It is unclear how a person proves a connection to a country they were not told they were going to until they were already going there.
Filing a legal objection from a country you arrived in three hours ago remains, for now, a constitutional right.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-trumps-third-country-deportation-policy-rcna599724