On Tuesday, September 29, the Supreme Court temporarily ruled that the Trump administration can deport immigrants to third-countries, or a country other than the one they consider their homeland. This ruling comes as an extension of a continued string of court cases targeting the due process protections for immigrants and asylum seekers in the United States.
Previously this year, the Trump administration won an appeal in a federal court that re-granted them the right to expeditiously deport migrants throughout the nation, not only along the southern border. In the Justice Department’s court filing for the case, they described this mechanism of speedy deportations, which can bypass due process protections, as an “essential tool to combat the unprecedented surge of illegal immigration over the past few years” and to deport their aimed goal of millions of migrants. This new Supreme Court ruling, allowing for third country deportations including to unsafe nations, comes as an expansion of these attacks on due process protections for migrants within the United States.
Deborah Pearlstein, Director of Princeton University’s Program in Law and Public Policy explains in a written statement that “detainees have made a powerful case that their process rights are being violated.” She expands that “the Court’s approach effectively allows the policy [of third country deportations] to continue longer” and “to affect a greater number of people.” She maintains that even if the Court ultimately reverses its temporary decision, it will be “practically extremely difficult for any of those deported under it ever to find a meaningful remedy.” Pearlstein elaborates that the interim ruling by the court on third country deportations, as on “birthright citizenship, the destruction of government agencies, and more…effectively allow even blatantly illegal executive actions to continue indefinitely, causing some harms (like this one) often very hard to correct after the fact.”
Pearlstein’s points are echoed by Douglas S. Massey, an Emeritus professor of Sociology at Princeton University, who holds that third country deportations have crossed the line into an unconstitutional mass relocation program, now temporarily allowed for by the Court. In a written statement, he shared how “the Trump administration’s immigration, detention, and removal policies are unethical, immoral, and unconstitutional.”
Throughout Trump’s campaign, he shared in rallies his intention to “begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” As means to accomplish this goal, the administration has resorted to means of removing migrants, bypassing their due process, changing the legal system through executive orders, and deporting migrants to nations they may not consider their homeland or to nations they may have never been to.
Massey associates the third country deportation policy as reflecting Trump’s “desire to accumulate and exercise power.” He references “the current deportation regime” which”plays favorably with his racist base…who hate immigrants and resent their presence” in the country.
An American pro se legal coach, Amelia, who preferred to only be identified by her first name for the protection of those she supports in the system, works to help those who can’t afford lawyers to understand the constantly shifting legal grapevine of immigration cases.
“In immigration court, you are not appointed a lawyer. You have to find one,” Amelia explains. She is severely concerned by the third country deportation policy on the grounds that many of her clients do not have access to proper technology, are not literate, and do not understand the legal structures changing around them. She describes a “cycle of deportation” that migrants face within the American system: “people get deported, and they have to leave [where they are deported to] against as they originally left because they feared something in their home country.” She details how some of the migrants she supports have been deported multiple times.
Another pro se legal coach at Amelia’s clinic who preferred to speak anonymously shared that, “by adding this third country option for deportation, when talking about people getting removed to third countries, the United States government is not stupid. They are trying to make it impossible for these people to return.” She describes the policy as a “fear tactic. If you are scared of being tortured or dying, and you hear by entering the U.S. that you could be sent to be tortured or die somewhere else, now you are faced with an impossible situation of what you can do.”
Another concern as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision two weeks ago is potential violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT), one of the hallmarks of the United Nation’s human rights work. Some of the nations the Trump administration is deporting migrants to are widely considered unsafe, torturous, are in active conflict zones, or are unsanitary prison facilities. Deportation to these nations, especially of third country deportees, may cross the line into violating the UNCAT, despite potential diplomatic assurances that deportees will not be subjugated to torture. However, as Massey states, “diplomatic assurances have no legal and standing and little moral weight…but for the Trump administration, that is the point.” There have already been reports of sexual violence, torture, and solitary towards asylum seekers deported under the third country deportation program.
