Deportation

A short guide for the perplexed

No person shall be .… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
—The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

There’s no question that due process is guaranteed not only to citizens, but to any resident of the United States.

But what so many people fail to understand is that deportation is not punishment. Punishment is punishment. Deprivation of life by execution is punishment. Deprivation of liberty by imprisonment is punishment. Deprivation of property by fines is punishment. Deportation is simply ending the privilege, granted conditionally to non-citizens, to be in the country. It is not a punishment. It deprives the deportee of neither life, nor liberty, nor property, since his presence in the US is none of those.

The same constitution that requires that citizens and non-citizens receive due process before being punished grants the executive branch sole determination of who may or may not enter the country, and who (among non-citizens) may or may not remain in the country. The legislature gets to determine the rules for becoming a citizen, but until someone is a citizen, their presence in the US is entirely up to the executive.

It’s 2025, and I understand that there is a large segment of the population that believes entry into the US is a right. That remaining in the US, regardless of how you got there, is a right. So deportation feels to them like deprivation of a right. But those feelings are just that: feelings. They aren’t the law, and they aren’t factually correct.

I don’t think if most of the people objecting to these deportations had to live next door to gangbangers who came into the US either illegally or under false pretenses (which is also illegal) that they would be empathizing as much with them. I think this is a false empathy spurred on by hearing over and over about a “Maryland father”, rather than a violent and undesirable alien.

I think people are being manipulated. I think that there are people who don't like this administration, so anything this administration does is going to feel bad to them. And if the media spins ordinary deportation of illegal or undesireable aliens as a punishment, those people are going to feel that it’s punishment. And if the media spun the illegal entry of millions of unvetted aliens into the country under Joe Biden as a humanitarian act — as they did — those people probably felt that it was a humanitarian act.

Ah, you may say. But the people being deported to El Salvador are being thrown into a horrible prison. First of all, “horrible prison” is redundant. And second of all, once a deportee has been deported, the responsibility of the United States for that deportee ends. If you don’t like El Salvador imprisoning the people we deport back to El Salvador, you are absolutely right to protest El Salvador doing so. Knock yourselves out.

The only due process a person is entitled to before being deported is a legal determination that the person is not, in fact, a citizen of the United States, not because of the due process clause, but because the executive branch’s prerogative to deport aliens applies only to aliens.