In a 7-2 decision (Dept. of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam) the Supreme Court of the United States found for the Trump administration. SCOTUS upheld the constitutionality of the Clinton era Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (1996) in ruling against an illegal alien’s ability to appeal a deportation order after a finding that asylum claims were not credible.

Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam, a Sri Lankan national, had crossed the southern U.S. border without documentation in January 2017, was apprehended within 25 yards of the border, and detained for expedited removal. According to court documents, he said he was afraid of returning to Sri Lanka because he had once been abducted and beaten by a group of men, but did not know who they were or why they attacked him. At the time, he said that he did not fear persecution due to his political beliefs, race, or any other protected characteristics.

As a result, an asylum officer determined that he did not have the requisite “credible” fear of persecution. A supervisor agreed and signed off on a removal order, which was then affirmed by an immigration judge who had heard additional testimony. This led to Thuraissigiam filing a habeas corpus petition for unlawful detention, which a federal District Court denied. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision, ruling that the law was unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court reversed this with Thursday’s ruling.

Writing for the majority, SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito pointed out that the respondent, Thuraissigiam, in filing a habeas corpus petition did not seek to be released from “unlawful detention” but demanded a completely different manner of “relief”, e.g. blocking of removal from the US, an order to Homeland Security to provide additional administrative review of his asylum claims.

Justice Alito also wrote that there was no 5th amendment Due Process violations as that administrative decisions pursuant to Congressional authorization constitutes due process for illegal aliens who “have never been naturalized, nor acquired any domicil or residence within the United States”.

What we have witnesses over the past several years is almost a cottage industry for open-border advocates in coaching illegal aliens on how to cross into the United States and what to claim in order to stay. Combining that with the catch-and-release policies of past administrations and illegals have crossed and disappeared into America. The Trump administration has tried to tighten down this flood and work faster on deporting illegals, especially those with bogus asylum claims. Such claims actually harm seekers with legitimate asylum issues.

The two dissenting Justices — Sotomayor and Kagan — basically claim that the long standing precedent of what defines habeas corpus and how due process works, is wrong.

Sotomayor, in her dissent joined by Kagan, said the majority’s decision “handcuffs the Judiciary’s ability to perform its constitutional duty to safeguard individual liberty and dismantles a critical component of the separation of powers.”

“It will leave significant exercises of executive discretion unchecked in the very circumstance where the writ’s protections ‘have been strongest,’” she wrote.

Whose “individual liberty” is Sotomayor talking about? Someone who illegally crosses the border? This kind of semantic sleight-of-hand is something the ACLU also engages in …

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt, who represented Thuraissigiam at the Supreme Court, said in a statement that the ruling “fails to live up to the Constitution’s bedrock principle that individuals deprived of their liberty have their day in court, and this includes asylum seekers.”

ILLEGAL aliens caught in or near the border do not have a Constitutional right to a “day-in-court”.

While there has been some recent SCOTUS decisions worthy of major facepalms, it is a relief to report this one finally went in America’s direction.

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