Judge Rules ICE’s “Third-Country” Deportations Are Unconstitutional

A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that a policy used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. to countries where they are not citizens is an unconstitutional denial of their due process rights.

So-called “Third-Country Removals” were adopted as official ICE policy in a memo last year, allowing for such deportations to take place with as little as six hours’ notice.

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy, who is based in Boston, found that the memo fails to provide sufficient time for migrants to challenge the agency’s actions.

“This new policy — which purports to stand in for the protections Congress has mandated — fails to satisfy due process for a raft of reasons,” Murphy wrote in his order.

The government, in defending the policy, had argued they were providing “assurances” to migrants that they wouldn’t face persecution or harm in the third countries they were being deported to. Murphy rejected that premise, noting, “nobody really knows anything about these purported ‘assurances.’”

“It is not fine, nor is it legal [to send people to an] unfamiliar and potentially dangerous country” without granting them any legal recourse, Murphy stated, adding:

These are our laws, and it is with profound gratitude for the unbelievable luck of being born in the United States of America that this Court affirms these and our nation’s bedrock principle: that no ‘person’ in this country may be ‘deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.’

Murphy also chastised the Trump administration for disobeying previous temporary orders he had issued, noting that officials had “repeatedly violated, or attempted to violate” his directives.

In a statement to The New York Times, a Justice Department spokesperson alleged that “the district court continues to ignore clear law.” The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling, which Murphy anticipated, placing a 15-day hold on his ruling.

Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which represented migrants in the case, lauded Murphy’s ruling.

“Under the government’s policy, people have been forcibly returned to countries where U.S. immigration judges have found they will be persecuted or tortured,” Realmuto pointed out, adding that Murphy’s ruling “is a forceful statement from the court that the administration has been violating the law.”

According to the American Immigration Council, prior to the Trump administration, the U.S. rarely conducted third-country deportations — when they did, it was under individual circumstances, not a general policy affecting a broad population of migrants.

“U.S. law requires the government not to deport anyone to a country in which they will be persecuted or tortured, or to deport them to a country that will then send them into harm,” the organization states on its website. “The Trump administration’s use of third-country deportations to send people into foreign prisons indefinitely; the lack of notice or due process afforded to immigrants before being sent to third countries; and several cases in which people ended up in countries where they had formally shown they were likely to be persecuted or tortured, all raise serious questions about the U.S. government’s compliance with its own laws in making and carrying out third-country deportation deals.”