The Supreme Court has ruled to allow the Trump administration to continue deporting undocumented immigrants to countries other than their own — at least for now.
Rights groups sued the Trump administration last year to stop what are known as third country removals — a process where immigrants are sent to a country they’re not from and have no ties to, often with little to no warning. Those subject to the practice have often been granted protection from returning to their countries of origin because of a specific threat they’d face there.
Robyn Barnard is with Human Rights First — one of the groups behind the suit. She says both a district court and an appeals court have already determined the practice violates due process.
“To allow it to continue until the Supreme Court actually hears arguments in the merits of the case and then issues a decision, which could be sometime into next year for an actual decision to be issued … it’s truly devastating,” she said.
The removals had been forced to a halt after the appeals court ruling, and the Supreme Court decision allows them to start again. The high court is expected to hear oral arguments in December.
The Trump administration has entered into third country deportation agreements with at least 35 countries and deported more than 25,000 people, according to a count by Third Country Deportation Watch — a project run by Human Rights First and Refugees International.
Barnard says there’s little to no public information about what the agreements entail, but her group has tracked deportees who report being subject to abuse in the new countries.
“People who’ve been beaten and threatened at gunpoint upon arrival in these third countries, as well as people who’ve been forced to return to the countries they fled to seek asylum here in the United States from,” she said.
This week, more than two dozen UN experts called on the U.S. to suspend the practice and the agreements, which they said are “largely removed from democratic oversight and independent human rights monitoring due to their lack of transparency.”
“States cannot contract out of their international legal obligations,” the experts said.
In an email, DHS General Counsel James Percival called the ruling the “second Supreme Court victory in less than a week,” and said third country removals were back in effect.
“A bad day for criminal illegals and open borders activists alike,” Percival said.
DHS did not respond to questions about how many third country removal flights would resume, or why some immigrants with no criminal record and a valid work permit in the U.S. had still been subject to the practice.
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