Court blocks Trump’s third-country deportation policy, rules detainees deserve more due process
WASHINGTON, DC: A federal appeals court struck down a cornerstone of the Trump administration's mass deportation plan Friday, Sept 18, ruling that people being deported to places where they have no connections should get more due process before being sent there.
The unanimous decision by the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston represents a major hurdle to one of the administration's favored means of swiftly removing illegal immigrants.
Judges say notice and a hearing are legally required
The Trump administration significantly weakened safeguards for so-called "third country" deportation last year in order to accelerate the process.
Past administrations rarely used third-country removals, but when they did, they gave the immigrants being deported notice of their likely destination and the opportunity to file fear-based claims of torture or persecution.
The Trump administration determined that it was unnecessary to give advance notice to people being deported to third countries as long as those countries have blanket assurances not to subject immigrants to torture or persecution.
“An individual's right to contest removal to a country based on a fear of persecution in that country means little if one does not receive prior notice of the intended removal destination and a meaningful opportunity to contest that destination,” Judge Seth Aframe wrote for the unanimous panel of the Boston-based 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.
“The statute and regulations prescribe hearing-related procedures for fear-of-persecution claims with no exception for third-country removals,” added Aframe, a Biden appointee. “We reject DHS's efforts to create such an exception from whole cloth.”
Advocates call the decision a win for fundamental fairness
A spokesperson for the immigrant rights advocates behind the case hailed the appeals court’s decision.
“For over a year, class members have lived under the threat of being sent to countries they had never been told they could be removed to, with little or no notice and without a meaningful opportunity to explain the dangers awaiting them there. Many have been deported to horrendous situations and danger under this policy,” said Trina Realmuto, a spokesperson for the National Immigration Litigation Alliance.
Realmuto lauded the appeals court for recognizing “that fundamental fairness and the law require meaningful notice and an opportunity to raise protection claims before any third country removal.”
The ruling upholds the bulk of a months-old decision by US District Judge Brian Murphy, a Massachusetts-based Biden appointee who has presided over the third-country litigation for more than a year.
In the ruling Friday, the appeals panel pared back one aspect of the decision Murphy issued in February ordering DHS to provide added protections to all potential third-country deportees.
Murphy ruled that under the law, migrants facing deportation had the right to be sent to their country of citizenship or one that they designated during their immigration-court hearings, unless those options were impractical.
But the appeals court said this lawsuit wasn’t the right forum to litigate that issue since none of the immigrants chosen as lead plaintiffs in the case alleged that the DHS ignored their requests on that point.
