SC steps into a new immigration dispute

‘Rapid deportation’

WASHINGTON, Oct 19, (Agencies): The US Supreme Court stepped into a new immigration dispute on Friday, agreeing to hear an appeal by President Donald Trump’s administration of a lower court ruling that could frustrate a top priority of his: quickly deporting illegal immigrants.

The justices agreed to review a ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals that favored a Sri Lankan asylum seeker. The 9th Circuit found that a federal law that largely stripped the power of courts to review quick deportations - known as expedited removal - violated in his case a provision of the US Constitution called the suspension clause.

The case involves Sri Lankan farmer Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam, who claimed that as a member of the Tamil minority in that country he was tortured over his political ties and subjected to beatings and simulated drowning.

“It is a foundational principle of our Constitution that individuals deprived of their liberty have access to a federal court - this includes asylum seekers whose lives are in danger,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who represents Thuraissigiam.

The court will hear oral arguments and issue a ruling in its current term, which ends in June 2020.

A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

Though the 9th Circuit’s ruling applied only to Thuraissigiam and did not strike down the law at issue, the court’s reasoning could still apply much more widely. The Trump administration told the Supreme Court the ruling would defeat the purpose of a system that targets specific immigrants for quick deportation, “undermining the government’s ability to control the border.”

Trump

Placed

Thuraissigiam fled Sri Lanka in 2016 and was arrested in February 2017 just north of the border between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico, near the San Ysidro port of entry. He was placed on track for expedited removal, a system dating back to 1996 that makes an exception for immigrants who can establish a “credible fear” of persecution in their home country. Officials rejected Thuraissigiam’s claim of credible fear.

The Trump administration has sought to greatly expand expedited removal to apply to the majority of people who enter the United States illegally unless they can prove they have been living in the country for at least two years. This would free up detention space and ease the strains on immigration courts, according to the administration. Previously, only immigrants in the United States two weeks or less could be ordered rapidly deported.

A federal judge in Washington last month put a halt to the administration’s rule announced this year on expanding expedited removal while litigation over it continues.

At issue in Thuraissigiam’s case is the power of courts to review certain aspects of expedited removal. Under federal immigration law, courts have jurisdiction only to ensure that the government is not deporting the wrong person.

Thuraissigiam, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, has argued that the government did not follow proper procedures or use the correct legal standard in assessing his bid for asylum.

The 9th Circuit in March (2019) ruled that under the Constitution’s suspension clause, relating to a person’s ability to challenge confinement by the government, courts must have expanded powers to review Thuraissigiam’s claims.

Also on Friday, the justices agreed to hear a separate case challenging similar restrictions on federal appeals courts to review the deportation of non-citizens who have committed criminal offenses, if their claims they would be tortured if returned to their home countries have been rejected.

Trump has made restricting immigration a signature policy of his presidency. The Supreme Court has given him a mixed record so far in high-profile cases affecting immigrants. Last year it upheld his travel ban on people from several Muslim-majority countries, but in June rejected his bid to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, which opponents said would deter immigrants from participating in the decennial population count.

Meanwhile, Lizbeth Garcia tended to her 3-year-old son outside a tent pitched on a sidewalk, their temporary home while they wait for their number to be called to claim asylum in the United States.

Criminal

The 33-year-old fled Mexico’s western state of Michoacan a few weeks ago with her husband and five children - ages 3 to 12 - when her husband, a truck driver, couldn’t pay fees that criminal gangs demanded for each trailer load. The family decided it was time to go when gangs came to their house to collect.

“I’d like to say it’s unusual, but it’s very common,” Garcia said Thursday in Juarez, where asylum seekers gather to wait their turn to seek protection at a US border crossing in El Paso, Texas.

Mexicans are increasingly the face of asylum in the United States, replacing Central Americans who dominated last year’s caravan and a surge of families that brought border arrests to a 13-year-high in May. Arrests have plummeted since May as new US policies targeting asylum have taken hold, but Mexicans are exempt from the crackdown by virtue of geography.

A legal principle that prevents countries from sending refugees back to countries where they are likely to be persecuted has spared Mexicans from a policy that took effect in January to make asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their claims wind through US immigration courts. They are also exempt from a policy, introduced last month, to deny asylum to anyone who travels through another country to reach the US border without applying there first.

Mexico resumed its position in August as the top-sending county of people who cross the border illegally or are stopped at official crossings, surpassing Honduras, followed by Guatemala and El Salvador. Mexicans accounted for nearly all illegal crossings until the last decade as more people from Central America’s “Northern Triangle” countries decided to escape violence and poverty.

Fewer Mexicans are crossing from the peaks reached in May, but the drop in Central Americans is much sharper, making Mexicans the biggest part of the mix, according to US Customs and Border Protection figures. Mexicans arrested or stopped at the border fell 8% from May to August, but border crossers were down 80% from Guatemala, 63% from Honduras and 62% from El Salvador during the same period.

It is unclear precisely what is driving the change, perhaps some mix of US policies and violence in Mexico. The Mexican government’s retreat from an attempted capture of a son of imprisoned drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman on Thursday followed a ferocious shootout with cartel henchman that left at least eight people dead.