Can Trump expel people to any country that will occupy them?

Earlier this month, the Trump administration deported eight immigrants to South Sudan, a country plagued by conflict and extreme hunger. Only one person who was convicted of violent crimes was from South Sudan, and their families reportedly had not heard from them since they arrived in the country. The Supreme Court allowed their deportation to take place, which raised concerns among human rights groups that the government would begin to deport more people to third countries that could face risks of violence and torture. Indeed, last week, U.S. immigration and customs enforcement issued internal guidance explaining that deportation moves forward when foreign countries provide “credible diplomatic assurances” to prevent detainees from being tortured.

I recently had a telephone conversation with Cristina Rodríguez, a professor at Yale Law School, who specializes in immigration law and separation of power. In our conversation (with detailed description and clarity), we discuss why these latest deportations are unique, whether the Supreme Court may step in again and make a broader ruling on third-country evacuation, and how the court should deal with governments that cannot be trusted.

So far, what is legally preventing the Trump administration from picking up non-citizens on the streets and sending them to any country they want, including those they don’t come to?

The first thing that stops them from doing this is to require that they get the right process before they are undoing someone. I don’t think anything that the Supreme Court or any other court did removes this basic protection, although the devil is certainly about the details of the due process.

The question is whether the regulations governing third-country relocation still play any kind of role in the way the government determines whether to send people to third-country. The regulation allows third countries to delete the last resort. The government should make other efforts and then move someone to a country where they have no citizenship, or have never lived before, or are not designated as a place to relocate.

We have little knowledge about the government’s negotiations with these countries being third-country driving locations, and it’s hard to say whether they are trying to comply with the restrictions in the regulations or to avoid them from circumventing them, just decide to do whatever is easiest and expel people to places in these third-country countries.

OK, a two-part question: what is a regulation and what should they do according to it? Second, what does “due process” mean in this case? What does this mean for the Trump administration, but what does it mean in this case?

The regulations are 8 USC, Section 1231(b). This is a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which lists different countries that are eligible for third countries that can be removed from office by the government. Therefore, if people cannot be sent back to their country of origin, it will not be prohibited to send people to third countries. The statute begins with listing where the government can delete a person, including the country where foreigners were sent to the United States, the country where they last lived, the country where they were born. Then it says that if it is impractical, inevitable or impossible to move someone to any of these places”, then the government can remove someone from another country that will accept them.

It has been done in the past, but few governments will move someone to a third country where the person has no connection to that person. Not to mention moving someone to a prison in a foreign country that they have no connection to or with a war zone is unheard of. So this is the consideration of Congress in theory that someone should move to a place they are connected to, but if these countries do not accept non-citizens, they must evacuate at some point.

In this case, “legitimate legal proceedings” should mean that before someone orders to move to a place that is not connected to them, they should take note of this fact and then have the opportunity to claim that such dismissal will violate the rights held under immigration laws. These rights include not being sent to places of possibility or possibility, where they will be tortured or subject to cruel, inhuman or degraded treatment without being removed from a country that may be persecuted, which is a different legal concept.

So the second person who will send Uyghur, even if they are not from China?

Exactly.

The government appears to claim that they will receive assurances from these third countries that these prisoners will be treated well. Obviously, there is absolutely no reason to believe what they say about this, but I think it might be a type of courts (especially the Supreme Court).

The first thing I want to say is that we should not talk about this in terms of the transfer of prisoners. As far as I know, some people who have been removed from office or who have been seeking to relocate to a third country are those serving their sentences in the United States and are therefore eligible to be removed from office and may be denied, but in the traditional sense they are no longer prisoners. The idea of moving someone to prison for further punishment is very worrying.

Sorry, yes, that’s a good point. I’m not going to use a language of any value. I just said they were deleting people.

Correct. But, I think it’s important to emphasize that because of the Alien Enemies Act things like Salvadoran prisons. It’s not just an evacuation to El Salvador. It is a person who has not been convicted of anyone sent to prison by the United States under the United States Agreement.

As for South Sudan, some media reported that South Sudan officials had custody of those who were moved there. Do we know if they are in prison? Do we know if they live in some position to work and move? We don’t know.

But when the government decides to move people to a third country, what the court will be able to do because they don’t want to stare behind negotiations the government has with other countries, it’s absolutely right. They certainly might want to review them, as this administration has made many misstatements in court and does not seem to want to justify themselves.

If the removed country is a country that the United States itself warns unsafe, it may also require review. If there is a basic saying that the government has passed diplomatic negotiations that there will be fair treatment, or that these countries are willing to accept them, I am not sure if the court can stop them without requiring procedures for hearing notifications and opportunities to make claims about torture, etc.