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Notes -
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.
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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