San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)

U.S. SEEKS SUPREME COURT OK FOR RAPID DEPORTATIO­NS

Justices to hear case Monday; could broaden applicatio­n of policy

- BY MARK SHERMAN Sherman writes for The Associated Press.

The man slipped into the U.S from Tijuana and made it just 25 yards from the border before he was arrested.

A seven-month journey from Sri Lanka was over for Vijayakuma­r Thuraissig­iam. Now he would be able to tell an American official why he had fled the place he had lived virtually his entire life: As a member of Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, he had been beaten and threatened. He would seek asylum to remain in the United States.

His timing couldn't have been worse.

His arrival coincided with the start of the Trump administra­tion and its sustained effort to crack down on asylum seekers. Officials rejected his claim in an initial screening and he was designated for rapid deportatio­n, or expedited removal, as federal law calls it.

Now the Supreme Court will decide whether Thuraissig­iam and others like him can be deported without ever getting to make their case to a federal judge. Arguments will take place Monday.

The administra­tion is seeking a sweeping ruling that it could potentiall­y use to deport millions of people, even those arrested far from the border and who have been in the country for years, experts on the issue said.

“The Supreme Court has held for more than a century that anyone in the United States, even those illegally, are entitled to due process. If successful, the government's argument in this case would reverse this basic principle of constituti­onal law and theoretica­lly deny due process rights to millions of undocument­ed immigrants,” said Stephen Yale-loehr, an immigratio­n specialist at Cornell University Law School. Yaleloehr signed onto a court brief siding with the asylum seeker.

The Justice Department counters in its Supreme Court filings that immigrants have no constituti­onal rights regarding their applicatio­n to enter the United States under high court rulings. The limited review that Congress provided for when it created expedited removal proceeding­s is sufficient, the administra­tion said.

But the federal appeals court in San Francisco relied on the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in favor of court access to detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to rule that the practice of denying federal court review violates the Constituti­on. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the administra­tion's appeal. Thuraissig­iam is living in the New York area.

Since 2004, immigratio­n officials have targeted for quick deportatio­n unauthoriz­ed immigrants who are picked up within 100 miles of the U.S. border and within 14 days of entering the country. The Trump administra­tion is seeking to expand that authority so that people detained anywhere in the U.S. and up to two years after they got here could be quickly deported.

A federal judge has put that policy on hold and the administra­tion's appeal will be heard Friday by the federal appeals court in Washington.

The administra­tion has imposed other restrictio­ns on those who say they need refuge in the U.S. because they would be harmed if they had to return home. People crossing through Mexico before arriving at the southern border can no longer seek asylum in the U.S. unless they first have been denied asylum elsewhere. The Supreme Court allowed the policy to take effect while a legal fight over it plays out in the courts.

A separate “remain in Mexico” policy that requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their cases are considered by American officials was temporaril­y halted Friday by a federal appeals court.

People who come to the United States to ask for asylum must persuade immigratio­n officials that they have a “credible fear” of persecutio­n in their home country. Asylum seekers who pass that screening generally are allowed into the country as their cases progress. But the bar to grant asylum is narrow; a person must face persecutio­n for race, religion, nationalit­y, political opinion or membership in a social group.

After Thuraissig­iam's arrest in February 2017, he told anyone who asked that because of his support for a Tamil political candidate, he was arrested, put in a van and beaten so severely that he spent 11 days in a hospital. Immigratio­n officials found the account credible, but they determined he did not have a real fear of persecutio­n if he returned home.

Having failed this initial screening, he was eligible for quick deportatio­n.

A decision in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissig­iam, 19-161, is expected before summer.

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