DHS takes ‘third countries’ deportation fight to Supreme Court
by Stephen Dinan · The Washington TimesHomeland Security asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to step into a fight over the government’s ability to remove illegal immigrants to ’third countries’ when their homelands won’t take them back.
DHS said a lower court order late Wednesday imposing new conditions on the deportations has spawned “chaos,” forcing cancelation of a flight that was supposed to remove criminals with drug and assault offenses on their records.
At issue is the procedures and notices DHS must give migrants before they are sent to third countries, and the assurances the government must have that migrants won’t face persecution or torture there.
A district court has found DHS’s notice lacking, and the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week largely upheld that order and allowed the ruling to take effect immediately.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices if they don’t step in, it will mean releasing dangerous migrants back onto the streets.
“Absent an effective third-country removal policy, the United States is forced to retain (and often release into the interior) vicious criminals who have already harmed our communities,” he wrote.
This marks the third time the case has been before the justices.
DHS won the previous two rounds, with the high court both times blocking rulings from U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, a Biden appointee.
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Judge Murphy’s latest ruling retreads much of the same ground, Mr. Sauer said.
He has ruled that DHS must give migrants written notice of the country to which they are destined, and then 10 days to challenge that country on the basis of a fear of torture, and 15 days to try to re-open their immigration cases.
Third-country removals have been part of U.S. law for decades, but the Trump administration has turned them into a core of its mass deportation campaign.
Some countries are notoriously bad about taking back their citizens, particularly those with serious criminal records.
In other cases, migrants can’t be sent to their homes because they face persecution.
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Under previous Supreme Court rulings, migrants can’t be detained indefinitely on immigration charges.
That leaves DHS with the choice of releasing them or finding a third country to take them.
The Trump administration has used third-country removals on “thousands” of migrants, Mr. Sauer said, and it has “thousands more” in it wants to boot.
Immigrant-rights groups, though, argue that migrants are being sent to places to which they have no ties, will struggle to live, and face dangers — including persecution and torture. They say the administration gives migrants too little chance to raise those fears.
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In one of the previous iterations to reach the high court, Judge Murphy had halted a flight of eight migrants while they were in transit to South Sudan.
The plane was forced to divert to Djibouti, where the migrants were held in a shipping container converted into a detention facility while the case was argued.
The Supreme Court in July last year put that order on hold, allowing the government to carry out the deportations.
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Stephen Dinan
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