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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   32208 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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Do deportees have the right to depart to a willing country of their choosing? Should they?

A lot gets muddied in the Culture War, in recent weeks the spats over deportations have conflated a number of distinct issues of immigration law: due process, the AEA, executive discretion and so forth. And it's quite hard to get folks to separate those topics. One topic that's possibly underexplored: if the US tells you to leave, do you the right to depart to a country of your own choice that will accept you?

I had kind of always assumed yes, at least as a naive matter. Obviously deportees shouldn't be allowed to invoke the right to prevent their removal or even delay it by any appreciable amount (say, 4 days), but at the core, I don't see any sovereign right for a country to dictate where an individual goes next so long as it ain't here. If they can't or won't find such a place, then sure, then the deporting nation can decide.

Analogies and intuition aren't always the best guide when dealing a the scale of nations, but thinking about it as alike to trespass confirms this understanding. This is especially true when an individual was here lawfully and then had that status revoked or expired -- if I invite someone into my house and then rescind the invitation (as I'm absolutely entitled to do), it's required that I give them a chance to leave in an orderly fashion before forcing them out.

I believe that individuals deported still have the right to go wherever will accept them from the country they are deported to, yes?

Presumably not if you dump them in an El Salvadoran prison.

If they were citizens of El Salvador then sure.

Deportees from countries that always accept returnees (ie developed countries) are pretty much always returned to them. If an Irish person overstays a visa and gets deported they are going home to Ireland on a commercial flight in most cases.

The issue is firstly with countries that don’t accept returnees because they don’t care or don’t want those people back, secondly with migrants who throw away all identity documents and don’t clarify or lie about where they’re from and thirdly - especially in Europe - with countries that the courts block deportation to.

That’s why third countries are so important, because they remove the incentive to hold up the deportation process because you’re not spending it in the country you’re trying to move to, but in a poor third country.

You wrote this 3 days ago, and already my feed has various stories of first-worlders (Canadians, Germans) spending far longer than one might imagine reasonable in ICE detention rather than taking a commercial flight.

Absolutely. I was not trying to address any of these three cases.

My limited claim here was that if an individual who is not convicted of a violent act is told to remove, they should get three days to remove themselves to a country of their choice. In all other cases cited, or once that three days is up, do whatever.

Do they get to demand a first-class flight with their choice of hot meal, too?

To be less flippant: probably few believe God gives them that right. Whether the state gives them that right is a question of law. Everyone will have their different opinion, for example I disagree with the cases you list:

I don't see any sovereign right for a country to dictate where an individual goes next

Since you don't speak of God or law, I'm unclear on what you mean. You seem to just be giving opinion on how nice the state should be to deportees. You give your opinion on reasonable guidelines that compromise between the state's burden and the deportee's comfort. It would indeed be kind for the state to ask where the deportee wants to go. Take away the talk of "rights" and this is just a debate over how the state should act. Are "rights" just rhetorical techniques for debating how states should act?

if I invite someone into my house and then rescind the invitation (as I'm absolutely entitled to do), it's required that I give them a chance to leave in an orderly fashion before forcing them out.

I disagree. If someone gets violent in my house then I do not ask them to leave. Probably though, it would be nicer of me to ask before physically removing. If my guest didn't start any violence, then I probably wouldn't either, but I do that out of kindness or maybe some kind of custom. Whether the actual deportations match this hypothetical (are only criminals being deported? I don't think so) is irrelevant -- you and me clearly disagree on how to run our house, and we would probably run a country differently, too.

Also I fully agree about somebody being violent in my house.

Many of the examples of individuals I would like removed from the United States, do not pattern match to this hypothetical. In particular, I don’t think those here temporarily-lawfully under non-meritorious asylum claims nor those that simply didn’t have their visa renewed qualify. Especially if they’re entry was lawful at the time, it is very hard to justify treating them a Kin to someone who came and committed acts of violence.

If they can arrange, at their own expense, a first class flight to a country that will accept them, departing within the next hundred hours, I would be inclined to let them take it.

And yes, I understand this to be customary.

They should either be deported to 1) their country of origin, 2) a country they transited through, or 3) anywhere the US government wants, if the person consents. A Honduran who jumped the Southern border ought to be able to be dumped back in Mexico. But I wouldn't want e.g. a British person who arrived by plane and who overstayed their visa to be dumped in Mexico.

I guess I would probably prioritize it with (3) first, if the person and the receiving country both consent.

I do think you’re imagining somebody apprehended proximate to the active crossing the border, not the removal of someone that’s been here for a while.

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