Latest news with #ConventionAgainstTorture
Int'l Business Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Int'l Business Times
'A Trap' - Asylum Seekers Arrested After Attending US Courts
In gloomy corridors outside a Manhattan courtroom, masked agents target and arrest migrants attending mandatory hearings -- part of US President Donald Trump's escalating immigration crackdown. Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to deport many migrants, has encouraged authorities to be more aggressive as he seeks to hit his widely-reported target of one million deportations annually. Since Trump's return to the White House, Homeland Security agents have adopted the tactic of waiting outside immigration courts nationwide and arresting migrants as they leave at the end of asylum hearings. Missing an immigration court hearing is a crime in some cases and can itself make migrants liable to be deported, leaving many with little choice but to attend and face arrest. Armed agents with shields from different federal agencies loitered outside the court hearings in a tower block in central New York, holding paperwork with photographs of migrants to be targeted, an AFP correspondent saw this week. The agents arrested almost a dozen migrants from different countries in just a few hours on the 12th floor of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building. Brad Lander, a city official who was briefly detained last month by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents as he attempted to accompany a migrant targeted for removal, called the hearings "a trap." "It has the trappings of a judicial hearing, but it's just a trap to have made them come in the first place," he said Wednesday outside the building. Lander recounted several asylum seekers being arrested by immigration officers including Carlos, a Paraguayan man who Lander said had an application pending for asylum under the Convention Against Torture -- as well as a future court date. "The judge carefully instructed him on how to prepare to bring his case to provide additional information about his interactions with the Paraguayan police and make his case under the global convention against torture for why he is entitled to asylum," Lander said. After his hearing, agents "without any identifying information or badges or warrants grabbed Carlos, and then quickly moved him toward the back stairwell," he said. Lander, a Democrat, claimed the agents were threatening and that they pushed to the ground Carlos's sister who had accompanied him to the hearing. The White House said recently that "the brave men and women of ICE are under siege by deranged Democrats -- but undeterred in their mission." "Every day, these heroes put their own lives on the line to get the worst of the worst... off our streets and out of our neighborhoods." Back at the building in lower Manhattan, Lander said that "anyone who comes down here to observe could see... the rule of law is being eroded." Since Donald Trump's return to the White House, Homeland Security agents have adopted the tactic of waiting outside immigration court rooms and arresting migrants as they leave AFP Agents arrested almost a dozen migrants from different countries in just a few hours AFP
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
ICE Plans to Ramp Up Deporting Immigrants to Countries Other Than Their Own
A memo reveals the federal government is planning to deport immigrants to countries where they hold no citizenship, with as little as six hours' notice and without any guarantees that they'll be protected from torture or persecution when they get there. In the memo, obtained by The Washington Post, Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detailed plans for deportations following a Supreme Court decision that cleared a path for rapidly deporting immigrants to places to which they have no prior ties. If the plans are implemented, many more immigrants may soon find themselves sent to countries where they know no one and do not speak the language — and they will have little to no opportunity to legally challenge their removal before it takes place. Lyons wrote that the Supreme Court's ruling in June allowed immigration officials to 'immediately' begin deporting immigrants to 'alternative' countries, a term used to describe a country where the deportee is not a citizen. This policy will apply to immigrants who have final removal orders but whom a judge has ruled cannot be sent back to their home country because it would put them in danger. It will also apply to immigrants from countries with whom the U.S. does not have strong relations, like Cuba or China. How much notice an immigrant gets, the memo said, depends on where they are being sent. If the U.S. has received 'diplomatic assurances' that immigrants sent to a particular country will be safe, and the State Department 'believes those assurances to be credible,' then immigrants will be deported there without any prior notice. If the immigrant is being sent to a place where the government has not secured such assurances, they could be deported there with hours' notice. According to the memo, 'in exigent circumstances' immigration officers could give immigrants as little as six hours' notice that they were being deported somewhere they have no protections against prosecution or torture. In other cases, immigrants will get 24 hours' notice. Immigration officers will not ask each immigrant if they have concerns about being sent to another country, but immigrants who do express a fear of being sent to a third country will be screened within approximately 24 hours to see if they are eligible for humanitarian protection according to federal law and the Convention Against Torture, a United Nations convention that Congress ratified in 1994 that protects immigrants from being sent to a country where they could be subject to torture. 'It puts thousands of lives at risk of persecution and torture,' Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, told The Post. All of this is part of the administration's plans for mass deportations. Although Trump promised during the campaign to deport criminals — 'the worst of the worst' — recent ICE data reveals that 72 percent of immigration detainees have zero criminal convictions. The government appears to be moving full steam ahead on deportations even though public opinion has recently pivoted, with one poll showing more Americans oppose than support Trump's immigration policies by a 27-point margin. Already, the Trump administration has been deporting immigrants to third countries, and it seems those numbers will only increase after the Supreme Court's ruling. Hundreds of Venezuelans are being detained at CECOT, a notorious prison in El Salvador known for inhumane and torturous conditions. Eight men from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Sudan, and Vietnam have been sent to war-torn South Sudan. The administration also illegally deported Salvadoran immigrant, Kilmar Abrego García, to his home country in violation of a judge's order. Abrego, who said he was tortured while in El Salvador, returned to the U.S. in June because the Supreme Court ordered the administration to bring him back. However, the government has recently considered sending him to a third country before he is able to stand trial on criminal charges. More from Rolling Stone Jordan Klepper Charts Trump's Long History With Jeffrey Epstein on 'The Daily Show' Why the Trump Administration Is About to Set Fire to 500 Tons of Emergency Food Speaker Mike Johnson Splits From Trump, Calls for Release of Epstein Files Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence Solve the daily Crossword
Atlantic
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Inscrutable Supreme Court
In the American system, courts don't make law; they interpret it. The act of interpreting the law requires, well, interpretation—not mere pronouncement, but an explanation for that pronouncement, backed up by law, evidence, and logic. That's why the Supreme Court's failure to offer any sort of reasoning to justify its order in Department of Homeland Security v. D. V. D is a threat to the rule of law, a reward for defiance, and a horrific example of a judicial process off the rails. The order is, unfortunately, only one of a recent spate of unexplained orders by this Court. The case involved the efforts by DHS (where I worked from 2005 to 2009 as a George W. Bush appointee) to deport aliens who are allegedly illegally present in the United States to third countries (that is, to countries other than the one from which they came) without affording them notice or due process. At issue was Donald Trump's efforts to send several individuals to South Sudan, where, they said, they would be subject to torture. Trump's process denied them the opportunity to prove that they had a 'credible fear' of harm and to argue that sending them there violates the Convention Against Torture (to which the United States is a signatory). A district court in Massachusetts had provided a preliminary-injunction order that prohibited sending the individuals to South Sudan without a hearing, leaving them stuck in limbo en route in Djibouti. The Supreme Court order lifted that injunction. Paul Rosenzweig: American corruption The order is so problematic that two commentators have dubbed it ' the worst Supreme Court decision of Trump's second term.' But even that is, in a way, too generous. Calling the order a 'decision' suggests that the Court offered reasons for its judgment. In D. V. D., in what could be, quite literally, a matter of life or death, the Court simply ordered the injunction lifted. This disregard for explanation is destructive to the idea that law matters. Reason and persuasion are a court's stock in trade; as Aristotle said, 'the law is reason.' Reason is all that stands between a court's claim that it is doing 'law' and the challenge that it is doing 'politics.' At least one of the conservative justices, Amy Coney Barrett, has said that she understands the importance of justification. Three years ago, she gave a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute, in which she movingly spoke about what she viewed as the Court's defining characteristic —the commitment to explaining its decisions in public. To those who criticized the Court (this was in the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs abortion decision) for imposing a political-policy position, she had a simple response: 'Read the opinion.' Even the most odious of the Court's decisions, such as the fugitive-slave case, Dred Scott, and the Japanese-internment case, Korematsu, offered reasons for their analysis—reasons that could be read and understood then and today, however unconvincing and repulsive they were. But at least one could be repulsed and unconvinced by them! Even poor reasoning in controversial decisions, such as in the transgender-health-care decision this term, shows how the Court reached its decision and allows for the possibility of a counterargument. One can't argue with a void. The complete absence of any attempt to explain (especially in controversial 6–3 cases such as D. V. D.) turns the Court into a mere vote-tabulation machine, accumulating political preferences by a 'yes' or 'no' accounting that is functionally indistinguishable from how Congress passes legislation. If Barrett wants us to read the opinion, she has to write it first. And perhaps in the act of writing, the Court might have recognized the error of its ways. In the D. V. D. case, a Massachusetts district judge had issued first a temporary restraining order (TRO) and then a preliminary injunction requiring immigration officials to tell immigrants where they were going to be deported to and allow them to object if they feared they would face torture at their intended destination. Whatever one may think of that requirement—and I think it is an eminently reasonable one—the Trump administration should follow court orders while a case is pending. If it disagrees with such a requirement—as it did—it should appeal the ruling, not ignore it. The administration did appeal the ruling; it did not, however, obey it in the meantime. This is a problem. To buttress the general requirement that rulings should be obeyed, the law has an overarching principle that courts should grant relief only to those who come before it with ' clean hands.' There should be no reward for bad behavior. No longer. In D. V. D., the Trump administration came before the Court with its hands as dirty as possible. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor recounted in her dissent, 'In violation of an unambiguous TRO, the Government flew four noncitizens to Guantanamo Bay, and from there deported them to El Salvador. Then, in violation of the very preliminary injunction from which it now seeks relief, the Government removed six class members to South Sudan with less than 16 hours' notice and no opportunity to be heard.' But far from punishing this executive defiance, the Court rewarded it, relieving the Trump administration of its obligations. As Sotomayor put it, 'This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last. Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.' All of this would likely not have been acceptable even if the majority had chosen to tell the nation why it did what it did. But as it is, Americans can infer only that the majority simply wanted what it wanted, and couldn't be bothered to explain its decision to the public, to the district-court judges below (who can only assume that the Court will no longer 'have their back' in the future), and to the individuals who have been deported to war-torn South Sudan, a country to which they have no apparent connection. Worse yet, by giving the Trump administration what it wanted, even though it openly defied the district court, the Court seems to be inviting yet more defiance of the sort. Certainly, that is how the administration will read the decision, especially in the absence of any limiting explanation. If it had chosen to write, the majority of the Court might also have explained how it analysed the balance of equities in its decision. One factor in injunctive relief is that a court is required to determine who would be harmed more in the interim and grant relief to try to prevent that greater injury. It would have been nice for the Court to have offered even a word or two about why it saw the possibility of being sent without notice to South Sudan as a less harmful result than the government being subject to restraint while a case is pending. One would love to 'read the opinion' about why the Court thinks thus. Conor Friedersdorf: Donald Trump's Cruel and Unusual Innovations The reasoning is anyone's guess, and that is at least part of why the district-court judge initially concluded that the Supreme Court's order didn't apply to a portion of the case pending before him. The Court had only itself to blame for his confusion and soon issued a clarification of its order, again without a word of substantive justification. As Sotomayor wrote in response to the Court's peremptory, cryptic order: 'The Court's continued refusal to justify its extraordinary decisions in this case, even as it faults lower courts for failing properly to divine their import, is indefensible.' Finally, on the merits, the substantive result of this decision portends possible death for those who have now been sent to South Sudan and immigration chaos for the broader system, again without any explanation of why this result is mandated by law. In two earlier unexplained decisions, the Court allowed the Trump administration to withdraw 'temporary protected status' and 'humanitarian parole' status from individuals who had received those designations during the Biden administration. As the names imply, immigrants with those designations are allowed to stay in the country. Once rescinded (as the Court now says Trump may do), the aliens in question are required to leave the United States, and if they do not do so voluntarily, they may be deported. Taken together, these decisions mean that more than 500,000 immigrants who are lawfully present in the United States are now eligible for wholesale expulsion to parts unknown. Under the Court's orders, Trump could, in theory, send 100,000 Venezuelans to Bhutan if the Bhutanese would agree to take them, all without a word of explanation. This is not law and reason. Rather, it is power, plain and simple. The Court's actions look and feel like nothing so much as the authoritarian rule of six Platonic Guardians, who, without a hint of humility, are so convinced of their own rectitude that they offer their subjects not even the courtesy of justification.
Vox
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Vox
The Supreme Court just stripped thousands of immigrants of their right to due process
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. In a short, one-paragraph order, the Republican justices ruled on Monday evening that President Donald Trump may effectively nullify a federal law and an international treaty that is supposed to protect immigrants from torture. The Court's order in Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D. does not explain the GOP's justices' reasoning, although Justice Sonia Sotomayor responds to their silent decision in a 19-page dissent joined by her two Democratic colleagues. The Court's order is only temporary, and will permit Trump to send immigrants to countries where they may be tortured while the D.V.D. case is fully litigated. It is possible that one or more of the Court's Republicans could reverse course at a later date. But it is hard to know what arguments might persuade them to do so because the justices in the majority did not explain why they decided this case the way they did. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Federal law requires that the United States shall not 'expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.' This statute implements a treaty, known as the Convention Against Torture, which the United States ratified over three decades ago. Trump's lawyers, however, claim that they uncovered a loophole that permits the Trump administration to bypass these laws, at least with respect to some immigrants. Typically, before a noncitizen may be removed from the United States, they are entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge. The immigration judge will inform the person facing deportation which countries they might be sent to, allowing the noncitizen to object to any countries where they fear they may be tortured. If the immigration judge determines that these objections are sufficiently serious to trigger the Convention Against Torture's protections, the judge may still issue an order permitting the immigrant to be deported — but not to the nation or nations the immigrant raised objections about. Related Trump asks the Supreme Court to neutralize the Convention Against Torture The D.V.D. case involves noncitizens who have already been through this process. In their case, an immigration judge determined that they may be deported, but not to specific countries. After the hearing process was complete, however, the Trump administration unexpectedly announced that it would deport the D.V.D. plaintiffs to other nations that were not previously under consideration. That means that no immigration judge has determined whether these immigrants may be sent to those particular nations, and the immigrants have not been given a meaningful opportunity to object to the new countries where they are about to be deported. Using this loophole, the Trump administration seeks to deport them without a new hearing. The Trump administration, moreover, appears to have intentionally selected countries where the noncitizens are likely to be unsafe. It wishes to deport many of these immigrants to South Sudan, for example, a country that was recently in a civil war, and where an uneasy peace appears to be collapsing. Others are slated for removal to Libya despite the fact that, according to Sotomayor's dissent, they 'would have landed in Tripoli in the midst of violence caused by opposition to their arrival.' The Trump administration, in other words, appears to have created a deadly trap for immigrants who fear torture in their home nations. These noncitizens may object to being sent home under the Convention Against Torture, and an immigration judge may even rule in their favor. But the Trump administration may still send them somewhere else even more dangerous.
Vox
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Vox
The Supreme Court's ugly new decision about torture, explained
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. In a short, one-paragraph order, the Republican justices ruled on Monday evening that President Donald Trump may effectively nullify a federal law and an international treaty that is supposed to protect immigrants from torture. The Court's order in Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D. does not explain the GOP's justices' reasoning, although Justice Sonia Sotomayor responds to their silent decision in a 19-page dissent joined by her two Democratic colleagues. The Court's order is only temporary, and will permit Trump to send immigrants to countries where they may be tortured while the D.V.D. case is fully litigated. It is possible that one or more of the Court's Republicans could reverse course at a later date. But it is hard to know what arguments might persuade them to do so because the justices in the majority did not explain why they decided this case the way they did. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Federal law requires that the United States shall not 'expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.' This statute implements a treaty, known as the Convention Against Torture, which the United States ratified over three decades ago. Trump's lawyers, however, claim that they uncovered a loophole that permits the Trump administration to bypass these laws, at least with respect to some immigrants. Typically, before a noncitizen may be removed from the United States, they are entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge. The immigration judge will inform the person facing deportation which countries they might be sent to, allowing the noncitizen to object to any countries where they fear they may be tortured. If the immigration judge determines that these objections are sufficiently serious to trigger the Convention Against Torture's protections, the judge may still issue an order permitting the immigrant to be deported — but not to the nation or nations the immigrant raised objections about. Related Trump asks the Supreme Court to neutralize the Convention Against Torture The D.V.D. case involves noncitizens who have already been through this process. In their case, an immigration judge determined that they may be deported, but not to specific countries. After the hearing process was complete, however, the Trump administration unexpectedly announced that it would deport the D.V.D. plaintiffs to other nations that were not previously under consideration. That means that no immigration judge has determined whether these immigrants may be sent to those particular nations, and the immigrants have not been given a meaningful opportunity to object to the new countries where they are about to be deported. Using this loophole, the Trump administration seeks to deport them without a new hearing. The Trump administration, moreover, appears to have intentionally selected countries where the noncitizens are likely to be unsafe. It wishes to deport many of these immigrants to South Sudan, for example, a country that was recently in a civil war, and where an uneasy peace appears to be collapsing. Others are slated for removal to Libya despite the fact that, according to Sotomayor's dissent, they 'would have landed in Tripoli in the midst of violence caused by opposition to their arrival.' The Trump administration, in other words, appears to have created a deadly trap for immigrants who fear torture in their home nations. These noncitizens may object to being sent home under the Convention Against Torture, and an immigration judge may even rule in their favor. But the Trump administration may still send them somewhere else even more dangerous.
