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SCOTUS clears the path for Trump's network of global gulags
And the MAGA justices are burning down the judiciary in the process.
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On Monday, the Supreme Court issued its most shameful shadow docket ruling yet.
With one anodyne paragraph, the Court simultaneously cut the legs out from under lower court judges and consigned countless immigrants to be renditioned to a system of global gulags.
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It’s a decision that will have long lasting corrosive effects on American civil society and respect for the courts.
“I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her impassioned dissent.
DVD v. DHS
The case involves a challenge to third country removals — that is, immigrants who cannot be repatriated to their home countries and are instead being dumped in some other nation which will accept them.
Like most of the people swept up in Trump’s deportation dragnet, the vast majority of affected immigrants were released into the community years ago and have been doing harm to no one — a reality the administration tries to hide by blasting out mugshots of the tiny minority of deportees with serious criminal records.
But The Intercept reports that, in its bloodthirsty quest to shove out as many people as fast as possible, the White House “explored, sought, or struck deals with at least 19 countries: Angola, Benin, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Kosovo, Libya, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Panama, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.”
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On March 23, a group of detainees sued in the District Court of Massachusetts seeking an injunction barring the government from deporting them to third countries without notice and an opportunity to object under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). Citing the Supreme Court’s rulings in the Alien Enemies Act cases, Judge Brian Murphy reasoned that telling people as they are being loaded onto planes that they’re about to be dropped in a country they’ve never seen clearly violates due process:
This case presents a simple question: before the United States forcibly sends someone to a country other than their country of origin, must that person be told where they are going and be given a chance to tell the United States that they might be killed if sent there? Defendants argue that the United States may send a deportable alien to a country not of their origin, not where an immigration judge has ordered, where they may be immediately tortured and killed, without providing that person any opportunity to tell the deporting authorities that they face grave danger or death because of such a deportation. All nine sitting justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Assistant Solicitor General of the United States, Congress, common sense, basic decency, and this Court all disagree.
Judge Murphy ordered the government to provide detainees written notice “in a language the alien can understand,” with “meaningful opportunity for the alien to raise a fear of return for eligibility for CAT protections and … if the alien is not found to have demonstrated ‘reasonable fear,’ provide meaningful opportunity, and a minimum of 15 days, for that alien to seek to move to reopen immigration proceedings to challenge the potential third-country removal.”
It should be noted that Judge Murphy repeatedly asked the government to define the minimum notice it believed would comport with due process. Perhaps wary of getting held in contempt if the DHS ignored it, the DOJ flatly refused to commit to any notice at all.
The government appealed to the First Circuit, which refused to stay Judge Murphy’s ruling pending appeal, after which the DOJ sought emergency review at the Supreme Court. But meanwhile, the situation had gotten totally out of hand thanks to the government’s consistent refusal to abide by the court’s order.
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