The Supreme Court finally slapped down this week one of the many Biden-appointed judges who have hampered President Donald Trump’s deportation efforts. The court blocked Judge Brian Murphy’s order creating new burdensome administrative hurdles and making it harder to deport illegal immigrants to countries they are not originally from.
One of the biggest barriers to swift and just immigration enforcement is that many countries either limit how many of their citizens they will take back from the United States each year or forbid the U.S. from sending back any of their citizens. Countries with such limits or bans include China, Cuba, India, Venezuela, and Vietnam. When these countries refuse to take back their citizens, the Department of Homeland Security is forced to house them, sometimes indefinitely, making it harder to hold and process other illegal immigrants.
Trump has sought to alleviate this bottleneck by entering into diplomatic agreements with third countries that will take deportees who are not citizens of those countries. These agreements are complex and sensitive foreign policy matters that the federal judges have no business interfering with.
More importantly, however, there is nothing in the Constitution, federal statute, or federal regulation that empowers an illegal immigrant to choose which country they are deported to. If an illegal immigrant is captured and determined to have no right to be in the U.S., then the federal government has every right to send them to whatever country is willing to take them.
Murphy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden and confirmed by Senate Democrats just this past December, disagrees. He believes that illegal immigrants destined for deportation to countries other than their home country are due extra rights. Specifically, he believes they are due notice of which country the U.S. plans to deport them to, and 15 days to challenge their deportation to that country. Mind you, this is on top of the process the migrants are already due to determine if they have credible fear of torture if they are returned to their home country.
Murphy entered a nationwide injunction of all such third-country deportations this March. One Guatemalan illegal immigrant argued in Murphy’s court that he should not be deported to Mexico because he was raped in the country. He wanted a hearing so that he could argue that Mexico was too unsafe for him. Murphy agreed.
The Trump administration then appealed Murphy’s order, with U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer telling the Supreme Court in May that Murphy “invented” an “onerous set of procedures” that made perfectly legal third-country deportations all but impossible.
The Supreme Court did not issue a decision explaining why it agreed to hold Murphy’s order, but the fact that it suspended its enforcement indicates that Murphy will most likely lose when the full case reaches the court.
Writing in dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Trump administration, “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.”
This is just false. The Trump administration honored onerous court orders from open borders Biden judges, including the order to stop deporting illegal immigrants to El Salvador. There is no evidence that the Trump administration has wrongly deported any U.S. citizens or legal residents.
BORDER SECURE, NO NEW LEGISLATION REQUIRED
Illegal immigrants are due process before they are deported, but not the same process as people are due in criminal trials. In Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, Justice Antonin Scalia said, “While aliens who have established connections in this country have due process rights in deportation proceedings, the Court long ago held that Congress is entitled to set the conditions for an alien’s lawful entry into this country and that, as a result, an alien cannot claim any greater rights under the Due Process Clause.”
If an illegal immigrant would be tortured by their government upon return to their home country, then they deserve protection. But just because an illegal immigrant thinks the U.S. is safe, and all other countries are less safe, doesn’t entitle them to legal status here. If illegal immigrants want to choose which country they live in next, they should self-deport. Otherwise, the U.S. government has every right to send them to any country that will take them.