Supreme Court Recognizes Surprise Deportation As Due Process
The Supreme Court restored America’s most flexible immigration principle Tuesday, ruling that when the government cannot deport someone to a sensible destination, it may select a more imaginative one. The divided order allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to continue sending migrants to third countries where they are not citizens, have never lived and may know only from weather maps. Lower courts had required “meaningful notice” and an opportunity to raise fears of persecution or torture, procedural extravagances that officials said could burden the government with learning where it was sending people.
The administration may rely on blanket diplomatic assurances that deportees will be treated decently upon arrival. Such promises carry the traditional guarantees associated with campaign pledges, airline schedules and Trump’s estimates of his own crowd sizes. “This is a tremendous victory for choice, because we choose the country, we choose the plane, and sometimes the person finds out too,” Trump said. “Nobody has ever had this many destinations, especially people who did not ask to travel at all.” Officials said requiring individualized review would undermine the program’s signature efficiency by forcing the government to distinguish between a human being and luggage routed through an unfamiliar airport.
Critics argued that migrants should know their destination before being placed aboard an aircraft and should be allowed to explain why that destination might expose them to torture. The administration countered that advance notice would ruin the Mystery Deportation model, under which a removal order doubles as an involuntary geography lesson. Hearings would also require evidence, lawyers and time, three scarce federal resources currently reserved for defending the policy that eliminated them.
The ruling further protects the public from the dangerous precedent of letting people object when the government sends them somewhere with which they have no connection. Today, a deportee requests notice before removal; tomorrow, a taxpayer could demand to know why his refund was mailed to Paraguay. The Court has therefore preserved executive efficiency by treating geography as a suggestion, due process as optional paperwork and “country of origin” as merely the first wrong answer on a government multiple-choice exam. Surprise deportation is now a constitutional travel benefit.
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