Closing time comes to every bar, and nobody acts surprised when the lights come up. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court let the Trump administration resume deporting people with final removal orders to countries other than their own while the justices hear the case in December. Predictably, the three left-leaning justices dissented. My view is simple. If you entered illegally, a judge ordered you out, and your homeland won’t take you, America can send you somewhere that will. The only destination off the table is staying here.
Critics treat this as exotic. Federal law disagrees. It lists where the government may send a person ordered removed, and the list ends with a catchall: “another country whose government will accept the alien.” Congress wrote that line. I’ve testified in courts, and I always read the statute before I read the headline. This one doesn’t require a law degree.
The history is short. The case began in 2025 when four immigrants with removal orders sued in Massachusetts. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy of Boston ruled in February that the policy violates due process and ordered notice and a chance to contest removal over fear of torture. The 1st Circuit upheld that ruling last week. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices the order took away “an essential tool to remove certain aliens.” By Axios’s count, roughly 25,000 people have already been removed to third countries.
No one was ambushed, either. Last year the Department of Homeland Security offered a free flight home, a $1,000 stipend, and forgiveness of accrued civil fines to anyone who used the CBP Home app, then tripled the stipend for the holidays. Those who declined chose to roll the dice, and the dice came up snake eyes.
Critics have one fair point. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in her June 2025 dissent, “In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution.” Nobody should ship a person to a place where they face torture, and federal law agrees. It generally bars removal to a country where a person’s life or freedom would be threatened because of race, religion, nationality, social group, or political opinion. The stay leaves that ban in place. The December argument will settle what process the government owes to those who broke our laws on the way in. And the administration insists it is targeting “the worst of the worst.” Destinations have included El Salvador, Libya, and South Sudan. Those aren’t resort towns, which is why a fast screening matters.
The fix is short, and Congress should codify it rather than waiting on nine justices. Give every person a written notice naming the destination. Allow a short window, measured in days. Let an asylum officer hear one fear claim, decide it fast and record the reasons. Publish the agreements with receiving countries. Justice Louis Brandeis had it right: sunlight is the best disinfectant. In my own field we call this due diligence. You verify before you wire the money, and you do it once, quickly, with a paper trail. That answers the humane objection without handing a veto to every appeal, and it stops professional delay artists from turning every removal order into a decade of litigation.
MANUFACTURING MENTAL ILLNESS TO BLOCK DEPORTATIONS: IT’S TIME TO PUT IMMIGRATION EVALUATIONS ON ICE
Also, deport families together. I’m the father of three sons, and I can’t imagine a policy that puts a parent on one plane and a child on another. Sorting that out at the airport is cruelty and bad management. The record on children is hardly reassuring. The DHS inspector general reported that as of May 2024, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had not served court notices on more than 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children, and that more than 32,000 missed their immigration court hearings between fiscal 2019 and 2023 under the Biden administration. A government that can’t keep track of a child has no business splitting one from a parent.
The court will decide the process question. The principle already has a statute behind it. Write the notice rule. Keep families intact by deporting them together. Publish the destinations, and let removal orders mean what they say. Last call was announced a long time ago. The bar stays open to anyone who comes through the front door.
Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a Bachelor of Science in criminal justice from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.