My weekend piece dealt with the misleading reporting about the Supreme Court’s suspension of an imperious ruling by an insubordinate Biden-appointed Boston federal judge — this time backed by a three-judge First Circuit panel that included two Biden-appointed judges — purporting to enjoin the Trump administration from deporting removable aliens to so-called third countries (i.e., countries to which they have no ties of citizenship, nationality, residence, or transit).
The Court did not green-light the policy, as declaimed by the legacy press, which is hostile for the same reason that animates the judges, their fellow progressives: They have open-border sympathies and are hard-wired to jeer enforcement of the immigration laws. Rather, the majority justices (in this instance, the Court’s six conservatives, opposed by its three progressives) merely imposed discipline on the lower federal courts: Immigration is a quintessentially political issue, implicating foreign policy and national security concerns that the Constitution leaves to the political branches; ergo, Congress writes the laws and the judiciary — which has no foreign policy or national security responsibilities — must stay its hand in areas where Congress says it has no jurisdiction. Congress has stripped district court judges of jurisdiction over removal issues, and it has expressly given the executive authority to deport to third countries aliens who have been ordered removed. The Court is reminding circuit and district judges that only Congress can change that law.
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