The Supreme Court ruled this morning that the federal government may deport illegal aliens, including those seeking asylum, quickly and with only limited judicial review.
The 7-2 ruling was a victory for President Donald Trump on immigration, his signature political issue, and could affect thousands of would-be immigrants now present in the United States. Oral arguments took place March 2.
The opinion in the case, known as Department of Homeland Security (DHS) v. Thuraissigiam, was written by Justice Samuel Alito. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion, which Justice Elena Kagan joined.
Most asylum claims “ultimately fail, and some are fraudulent,” Alito wrote for the court.
“In 1996, when Congress enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) … it crafted a system for weeding out patently meritless claims and expeditiously removing the aliens making such claims from the country.
“It was Congress’s judgment that detaining all asylum seekers until the full-blown removal process is completed would place an unacceptable burden on our immigration system and that releasing them would present an undue risk that they would fail to appear for removal proceedings.”
The statute imposed restrictions on the ability of asylum seekers to have the lawfulness of their detention reviewed, but, after Sri Lankan national Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam’s claim that he had a credible fear of persecution in his homeland was rejected, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reversed a lower court ruling and found he was entitled to challenge his detention in federal court.
But Congress is entitled to speed up the removal process, and according to the Supreme Court’s precedents, the detention review-limiting provisions in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act do not run afoul of the Constitution, Alito wrote in overturning the decision rendered by the 9th Circuit.
The case goes back to 2017, when Thuraissigiam, an ethnic Tamil, a group that has been persecuted in Sri Lanka, was arrested 25 yards north of the U.S.–Mexico border in San Ysidro, California, after entering the country unlawfully. His case was processed under the expedited removal system instead of the slower-moving traditional removal system.
While trying to demonstrate he had a credible fear of persecution in his homeland, Thuraissigiam claimed he had been detained and beaten in 2007 by Sri Lankan army officers for supporting a Tamil political candidate and that in 2014, government officials kidnapped and tortured him. A U.S. asylum officer, a supervisory asylum officer, and an immigration judge all rejected his refugee claim, and the file was sent to DHS for the man’s deportation.
Justice Sotomayor criticized her fellow justices in her dissent, saying they were ignoring binding legal precedents.
“The majority declares that the Executive Branch’s denial of asylum claims in expedited removal proceedings shall be functionally unreviewable through the writ of habeas corpus, no matter whether the denial is arbitrary or irrational or contrary to governing law. That determination flouts over a century of this Court’s practice.”
This is a developing story. This article will be updated later today as needed.
From The Epoch Times
