Trump Administration Appeals Supreme Court Ruling on Third-Country Deportations

The takes

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  Adam Smith

  1723–1790, Scotland (the Scottish Enlightenment: Kirkcaldy, Glasgow, Edinburgh)

  Deportation by Proxy Is Not Justice but Evasion

  When a government ships human beings to countries they do not know, and sometimes back toward dangers its own judges have already recognized, it is not enforcing law but outsourcing its conscience.

  One detail of the present controversy is worth dwelling on before it vanishes amid the usual noise of accusation and defence. We are told that in the opening months of the current administration there was an initial wave of deportations, and that in August the practice spiked again: sixteen flights in a single month, bearing people to thirteen different countries that were not their own. Some twenty thousand persons have been bussed to Mexico; more than five thousand have been flown to countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and central Asia, to which they had no connection, and often from which they are swiftly returned to the very dangers that American judges had already acknowledged. Here the cruelty is not merely incidental; it is the mechanism.

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  John Locke

  1632–1704, England (writing amid the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution)

  Deportation to Unknown Lands Is Not Law but Force

  When a government casts human beings into alien countries where judges have said their lives or liberty are at risk, it ceases to govern by right and begins to rule by usurpation.

  I read that, in recent months, thousands of persons have been taken by public officers, some bussed to Mexico, others placed on flights to countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and central Asia to which they have no connection, and that many of these are then returned to the very countries where immigration judges had ruled their lives or liberty were at risk. A ruling has for the moment halted these third‑country deportations, and the administration has urgently appealed to the supreme court to restore them. I do not know the secret bargains or the full detail, but I know enough to say this much plainly: this is no ordinary dispute about policy; it is a contest about the very ends of political power.

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  Niccolò Machiavelli

  1469–1527, Florence (republican secretary and diplomat, then exile, amid the Italian Wars)

  Harsh Borders, Weak Foundations

  Mass deportations to third countries show force, but without clear necessity, limits, and public consent, such virtù rots into corruption rather than securing the state.

  A government that sends thousands of people to countries they do not know is not confused about its intentions. Here we have buses carrying about 20,000 to Mexico, and flights sending more than 5,000 to Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and central Asia, even when judges in that same state had ruled their lives or liberty were at risk. Then a ruling throws this practice into question, and the rulers rush to the supreme court to save it. The princes of my time also tried to push their enemies into distant lands; the Romans did it with conquered peoples. The difference is whether the harshness is tied to public safety, or merely to spectacle and the ruler’s insecurity.

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