DHS exposes dilemma behind SCOTUS deportation fight: ‘We have two choices’

By Fox News · Fox News

The Supreme Court temporarily cleared the Trump administration to continue its third-country deportation policy this week, as DHS’ top lawyer mounts a public defense of an immigration authority the administration says previous presidents largely left dormant. DHS has increasingly used so-called "third-country" removals when a removable alien cannot be returned to their home country or that country refuses to take them back — part of what agency General Counsel James Percival describes as a broader Trump strategy of reviving immigration authorities already on the books. "Imagine going to a country and saying, hey, we've got a guy, he's not your guy, and he's a rapist, but can he please live there?" Percival told Fox News Digital. "That's not an easy ask. It requires significant diplomatic energy… Norway is not taking a rapist from Cuba." TRUMP’S SPECIAL STRATEGY TO DEPORT ILLEGALS GIVES HIM ANOTHER TOOL FOR ENFORCEMENT The justices on Tuesday stayed a lower-court judgment restricting DHS’s policy, allowing the administration’s guidance to remain in effect while the Court considers the case on the merits. Arguments are set for December over whether agency procedures comply with federal immigration law, due process and safeguards against torture. The case does not squarely challenge DHS’s underlying authority to conduct third-country removals, but rather the procedures it must follow beforehand. "It’s in the statute expressly that we can do this," he said. "If you go back and read most of the immigration laws, there's a lot of really good tools in there that people just haven't used." The third-country provision was included in a major immigration reform package passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996: the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). "A lot of people in government sort of treat their authority like fine china," Percival remarked. "They're afraid if they ever actually use it, someone will take it away. A…