We don’t always recognize the hinge points of history when we live through them. But a recent Supreme Court decision may go down as one of those moments.
On Monday, the high court cleared the way for the Trump administration to resume deporting immigrants to countries other than their own, setting the stage for a new phase of mass deportations that will be remembered with shame.
The decision was not final, as the court’s conservative majority merely overturned a temporary order that gave the deportees time to contact their lawyers and argue before a judge that their lives would be at risk if they were sent to these countries.
But the conservative justices gave the Trump administration what it wanted — even after it repeatedly defied lower courts — in a decision that came with no explanation. That doesn’t bode well for the future.
The administration’s solution is to send them to places where they may not speak the language or know a single person.
At issue are immigrants who come from countries that won’t take them back, including Mexico, Vietnam and Cuba. The administration’s solution is to send them to so-called “third countries” — places they don’t come from, didn’t choose and where they may not speak the language or know a single person.
Even more damning is the fact that the administration tried to send one of the first groups of immigrants to South Sudan, an East African country teetering on the brink of war. In March, Trump’s own State Department issued a Level 4 travel advisory telling Americans not to visit the country due to the risk of “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.”
The Supreme Court’s silence on this atrocity could be a turning point. The legal foundation for mass human relocation — without hearings, without warnings, without regard to safety or even basic human dignity — was laid.
This isn’t policy. It is cruelty as a strategy. And it is escalating.
The decision came as the Trump administration is ramping up its most aggressive deportation machine yet. The Republican megabill being debated in the Senate would explode federal immigration enforcement spending from $33.9 billion to $200 billion.
A budget that size makes it clear that a massive deportation program is in the works. We just don’t know exactly what it looks like yet. But we have a clue.
Will hundreds of thousands of people be shipped to “third countries”? Will CECOT or Gitmo — once symbols of counterterrorism — become repurposed to detain and disappear migrants on a scale we have never seen? The Trump administration has defended the deportations as targeting the “worst of the worst,” but it’s just a thin fiction. Almost half of the people currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody have neither been convicted of nor charged with a crime, while only 6% of known immigrant murderers have been arrested since October. The reality is that the deportations are indiscriminate and often obscene.
A 19-year-old high school soccer star with no criminal record was deported after a routine immigration check-in turned out to be a trap.
An Army veteran who received a Purple Heart after he was shot in the spine is being sent to South Korea after living in the U.S. for 48 years. A 4-year-old U.S. citizen with Stage 4 cancer was sent to Honduras without access to his medication along with his mother. It would be nice to pretend that this is all the fault of Trump and allies such as Stephen Miller. But this is happening on our watch, and too many of us either don’t care or agree with it. In a recent NBC News poll, Americans were essentially split, with 51% approving of his handling of immigration and border security and 49% disapproving. For generations, Americans spoke of immigration as the fullest expression of our homeland — a “melting pot” of culture and opportunity; and the immigrant as embodying the values of hard work, resilience and hope. But Trump wants us to look away, to turn away from our noble ideals while ignoring the humanity of the people being taken off the street by masked men in an unmarked van. He wants us to forget the Sunday school teachings about treating immigrants with compassion. The people the administration is ripping out of our communities often came here fleeing violence and seeking opportunity. The people the administration is ripping out of our communities often came here fleeing violence and seeking opportunity. They built lives, worked hard jobs, sent their kids to school and worshipped alongside us. We should be welcoming them, creating legal pathways for them to live and work, not tossing them aside. Our laws should reflect our values, not our fears. But here we are. Far too many of us are no longer moved by the aspirational stories that have defined prior generations of immigrants — and America. Instead, they watch in silence or tacit agreement as families are broken apart, rights are stripped of their meaning and individuals are sent away, all in our name. They may not speak up, but we must because this is not who we are, nor what we want to pass on to our children. For more thought-provoking insights from Michael Steele, Alicia Menendez and Symone Sanders-Townsend, watch “The Weeknight” every Monday-Friday at 7 p.m. ET on MSNBC.
Michael Steele
Michael Steele is a co-host of "The Weeknight," which airs Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. ET on MSNBC. He is a former lieutenant governor of Maryland and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. 
