NYT : Supreme Court Says Rejected Asylum Seekers Have No Right to Object in Court

[Celerity]

The case concerned a member of Sri Lanka’s Tamil ethnic minority who said he feared persecution and sought to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/us/supreme-court-asylum-habeas.html



WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court sided on Thursday with the Trump administration’s efforts to speed the deportation of asylum seekers, ruling that a law limiting the role of federal courts in reviewing those decisions was constitutional. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers, allowing them to continue to use a program that shields them from deportation and allows them to work. Thursday’s decision, which barred immigrants whose asylum claims were rejected in bare-bones proceedings from filing petitions for habeas corpus, struck a strikingly different note.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the five more conservative justices in the 7-to-2 decision, said asylum claims threatened to overwhelm the immigration system. Congress was entitled to respond to that crisis, he wrote, by enacting a law that limited the role federal courts may play in reviewing summary determinations of whether asylum seekers faced a credible fear of persecution were they returned to their home countries.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, said the majority had damaged the rule of law. “Today’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,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. The majority was unduly focused on “the burdens of affording robust judicial review of asylum decisions,” she wrote. “But our constitutional protections should not hinge on the vicissitudes of the political climate or bend to accommodate burdens on the judiciary.”

Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the immigrant who brought the new case, said the Trump administration’s immigration policies had made the need for judicial review more pressing. “This law has been in existence since 1996,” he said, “but the need for judicial oversight has increased dramatically because the Trump administration has so eviscerated the protections in the underlying asylum hearings.” “This 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,” Mr. Gelernt said. “This decision means that some people facing flawed deportation orders can be forcibly removed with no judicial oversight, putting their lives in grave danger.”

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[TristanIsolde]

1. why was this a 7-2 decision rather than a 5-4 ?

[Celerity]

3. RBG and Breyer agreed with the outcome, but not the possible future ramifications

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, agreed with the court that Thuraissigiam’s claims were too vague to make a credible case for asylum. But they said there was no need for the court to make additional pronouncements that would seal off the courts from others who might have stronger cases.

[uponit7771]

2. This is a GREAT decision for US citizens, "it'll burden the judicial system" now will allow ANYONE

... to go free that'll put more than what? 10 cases a day on any judicial area?

If the USSC isn't consistent here then this decision is horrible