The administration was deporting people to countries they’d never lived in, with as little as six hours’ notice, with no meaningful chance to say “I’ll be killed if you send me there.”
A federal judge ruled it unlawful. An appeals court expressed unease. The administration kept pushing anyway.
This isn’t about whether someone should be deported. It’s about whether the government has to follow basic legal procedure before shipping a human being to a country where they might face persecution, torture, or death. Six hours. That’s what they were offering. Six hours to somehow prove you’ll be murdered if they put you on that plane.
Due process isn’t a technicality or a loophole. It’s the thing that separates a government operating under law from one that does whatever it wants to people it has power over. When you can remove someone to a third country on six hours’ notice with no real hearing, you’re not enforcing immigration law — you’re just making people disappear.
Courts keep saying no. The administration keeps looking for ways around it.
When the government decides that speed matters more than whether someone lives or dies, you don’t have rule of law anymore. You have rule of whoever’s in charge.
Sources: Reuters — appeals court | Al Jazeera — judge ruling