联邦法院的底线浮现：移民的正当程序权利
【中美创新时报2025 年 5 月 18 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）如果联邦法院对特朗普总统激进驱逐政策后果的反应有一个共同的主题，那就是白宫不能绕过正当程序的基本原则，仓促驱逐人员。《纽约时报》记者艾伦·费尔和艾比·范西克尔对此作了下述报道。
在一个又一个的案件中，一条法律底线逐渐显现：移民至少应该有机会对驱逐令提出质疑，尤其是在特朗普政府官员声称拥有驱逐他们的全新且非凡的权力的情况下。
这一观点的最新、最清晰的表达出现在周五晚上，当时最高法院指责特朗普政府试图仅提前一天向德克萨斯州的一群委内瑞拉移民发出警告，而特朗普政府一直试图根据 18 世纪战时法律的广泛权力驱逐这群委内瑞拉移民。
法官写道：“在罢免前大约 24 小时发出的通知，缺乏关于如何行使正当程序权利来对抗罢免的信息，肯定不符合规定。”
尽管特朗普的驱逐计划仍有许多疑问有待解答，但许多法律学者对法院支持正当程序表示赞赏。与此同时，他们也对这种支持是否有必要表示担忧。
哈佛大学法学院教授迈克尔·克拉曼在一封电子邮件中写道：“法院捍卫了我们宪法秩序的最基本原则之一，这很好——‘个人’（而非‘公民’）在被剥夺生命、自由或财产之前有权获得正当程序。” “如果政府能够停止违反这些原则，那就更好了。”
最高法院做出这一决定之际，特朗普和他的一些高级助手公开藐视为等待被驱逐出境的移民提供正当程序的想法，而宪法似乎已明确规定了这一立场，而且大法官们自己在之前的判决中也多次坚持这一立场。
特朗普本月在哥伦比亚广播公司新闻中表示：“我们有数百万人非法入境，我们不可能对每个人进行审判。”
最近，特朗普的首席国内政策顾问斯蒂芬·米勒更进一步表示，政府正在考虑暂停人身保护令——这是宪法对非法拘留最重要的保护措施之一。
虽然白宫可能无权暂停执行该令状，但这样做会削弱根据《外国敌人法》被驱逐出境的移民对其驱逐令提出异议的能力，以及其他一些权利。根据最高法院此前就特朗普援引战时法律作出的裁决，法官裁定，根据该法案质疑驱逐令的移民必须通过人身保护令程序提出异议。
被拘留者可以援引人身保护令（拉丁语，意为“让我看看尸体”），以便向法官寻求帮助，裁定他们的拘留是否违法。
1798 年通过的《敌对外国法》最后一次被用来在二战期间和战后拘禁和遣返日本、意大利和德国国民，与该法有关的案件可以说比许多其他驱逐出境案件受到了更多的关注。
全国各地的法院正在审理大约10起此类案件。一些审理这些案件的法官裁定特朗普非法使用了该法律。但几乎所有法官——包括一位认为特朗普合法使用该法律的法官——都一致认为：移民在被驱逐出境之前必须有能力对其驱逐决定提出异议。
这些案件并不是联邦法院介入并坚持要求移民获得正当程序的唯一案件。
周五，大约在最高法院就德克萨斯州案件做出判决的同时，波士顿一家联邦上诉法院表示，如果移民有理由担心被遣送到其他国家，政府在将他们驱逐到其他国家之前，必须继续给予他们 15 天的警告期。
这一裁决是针对一起移民律师指控特朗普政府官员在未充分警告的情况下，将几名男子从古巴关塔那摩湾美国海军基地遣送至萨尔瓦多的案件做出的。此外，负责此案的地区法官本月裁定，特朗普政府将一批移民驱逐至利比亚的计划违反了他的命令，该命令要求在将这些人遣送至可能遭受迫害的非本国之前必须经过正当程序。
最高法院在周五的裁决中指出，正当程序问题对于面临驱逐出境的移民来说“尤为重要”，因为特朗普政府一直拒绝遣返被驱逐出境的人，即使他们的驱逐是错误的。
此外，法官指出，那些被遣返萨尔瓦多的人可能会在那里面临“无限期拘留”。
弗吉尼亚大学法学教授阿曼达·弗罗斯特表示：“法官们非常清楚，政府正在尽可能地操纵程序，以避免司法审查，法院将会制止这种行为。”
法官们特别关注了基尔马·阿布雷戈·加西亚 (Kilmar Abrego Garcia) 的案件，这名马里兰州男子于 3 月被空运到萨尔瓦多，尽管之前的法院命令明确禁止他被送往那里。
尽管最高法院一个多月前下令白宫“协助”阿布雷戈·加西亚从萨尔瓦多监狱获释，但阿布雷戈·加西亚至今仍身处萨尔瓦多。作为裁决的一部分，法官们告知特朗普政府官员，他们必须为阿布雷戈·加西亚提供与其未被不当驱逐出境时同等的正当程序。
他们坚持对阿布雷戈·加西亚进行正当程序，这一主张得到了审理此案的法官保拉·希尼斯 (Paula Xinis) 和著名保守派上诉法院法官 J. 哈维·威尔金森 (J. Harvie Wilkinson) 的赞同，威尔金森于 4 月对此案做出了严厉的裁决。
“在某些情况下，要触及问题的核心很困难，但在这种情况下，一点也不难，”威尔金森写道。“政府声称有权将本国居民关押在外国监狱，而这完全没有经过正当程序，而正当程序正是我们宪法秩序的基础。”
最高法院尚未明确说明对阿布雷戈·加西亚的正当程序是怎样的，以及是否需要将他带回美国才能赋予他全部权利。
此案目前正陷入希尼斯（Xinis）的争议性努力，试图确定白宫究竟做了哪些事情，以及没有做哪些事情来遵守法官的指示。但几乎可以肯定，此案将再次回到最高法院，届时最高法院可能会提供更详细的案件路线图。
最高法院在德克萨斯州涉及《外国敌人法案》的案件中也采取了类似的做法。作为周五裁决的一部分，最高法院将此案发回美国第五巡回上诉法院，指示其就根据该法案在驱逐移民前应给予多少时间以及何种形式的通知进行讨论。
本文最初发表于《纽约时报》。
题图：华盛顿美国最高法院Al Drago/Bloomberg
附原英文报道：
Federal courts’ emerging bottom line: due process rights for immigrants
By Alan Feuer and Abbie VanSickle New York Times,Updated May 17, 2025, 5:14 p.m.
The US Supreme Court in WashingtonAl Drago/Bloomberg
If there has been a common theme in the federal courts’ response to the fallout from President Trump’s aggressive deportation policies, it is that the White House cannot rush headlong into expelling people by sidestepping the fundamental principle of due process.
In case after case, a legal bottom line is emerging: Immigrants should at least be given the opportunity to challenge their deportations, especially as Trump officials have claimed novel and extraordinary powers to remove them.
The latest and clearest expression of that view came Friday evening, when the Supreme Court chided the Trump administration for seeking to provide only a day’s warning to a group of Venezuelan immigrants in Texas it had been trying to deport under the expansive powers of an 18th century wartime law.
“Notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal,” the justices wrote, “surely does not pass muster.”
Although many questions remain to be answered about Trump’s deportation plans, many legal scholars have hailed courts’ support of due process. At the same time, they have also expressed concern that such support was needed in the first place.
“It’s great that courts are standing up for one of the most basic principles that underlie our constitutional order — that ‘persons’ (not ‘citizens’) are entitled to due process before being deprived of life, liberty, or property,” Michael Klarman, a professor at Harvard Law School, wrote in an email. “It would be even better if the administration would simply cease violating such principles.”
The Supreme Court’s decision comes as Trump and some of his top aides have openly flouted the idea of providing due process to immigrants awaiting deportation, a position that the Constitution appears to lay out clearly and that the justices themselves have repeatedly upheld in previous decisions.
“We have millions of people that have come in here illegally, and we can’t have a trial for every single person,” Trump said this month on CBS News.
Recently, Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief domestic policy adviser, went further, saying that the administration was considering suspending the writ of habeas corpus — one of the Constitution’s most important protections against unlawful detention.
Although the White House probably lacks the power to suspend the writ itself, doing so would gut the ability of immigrants subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act to contest their deportations, among other things. Under a previous ruling by the Supreme Court on Trump’s use of the wartime law, the justices held that immigrants challenging their removal under the act must do so through the habeas corpus process.
People in custody can invoke habeas corpus — Latin for “show me the body” — as a way to get in front of a judge to determine if their detention is unlawful.
The cases concerning the Alien Enemies Act, passed in 1798 and last invoked to intern and repatriate Japanese, Italian and German nationals during and after World War II, have arguably gotten more attention than many other deportation cases.
There are about 10 such cases moving through courts across the country. Some of the judges hearing the cases have ruled that Trump used the law illegally. But almost all of them — including one who said Trump was using it lawfully — have agreed on one thing: that immigrants must have the ability to contest their deportations before they are removed.
Those cases are not the only ones in which federal courts have stepped in to insist that immigrants receive due process.
On Friday, about the same time that the Supreme Court issued its decision in the Texas case, a federal appeals court in Boston said the administration had to keep giving immigrants a 15-day warning period before deporting them to countries other than their own if they had reason to fear being sent there.
That decision came in a case in which immigration lawyers have accused Trump officials of sending a handful of men from the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to El Salvador without sufficient warning. In a related development, the district judge overseeing the case ruled this month that plans by the administration to deport a group of immigrants to Libya would violate his order requiring due process before people are sent to countries not their own where they might face persecution.
In its Friday ruling, the Supreme Court noted that the issue of due process was “particularly weighty” for immigrants confronting deportation because the Trump administration has consistently refused to bring back people who were sent out of the country, even if their removals were in error.
Moreover, the justices noted, those who have been removed to El Salvador could face “indefinite detention” there.
“The justices are well aware that the administration is manipulating the process as much as possible to avoid judicial review, and the court is going to put a stop to it,” said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia.
The justices focused in particular on the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was flown to El Salvador in March even though a previous court order had expressly prohibited him from being sent there.
Abrego Garcia is still in El Salvador despite the fact that the Supreme Court ordered the White House more than a month ago to “facilitate” his release from Salvadoran custody. As part of their decision, the justices told Trump officials that they had to provide Abrego Garcia with the same due process that he would have been afforded had he not been improperly deported.
Their insistence on due process for Abrego Garcia has been echoed by Judge Paula Xinis, the trial judge hearing the case, and by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a prominent conservative appeals court judge who issued a scathing ruling on it in April.
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter, but in this case, it is not hard at all,” Wilkinson wrote. “The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.”
The Supreme Court has not laid out exactly what due process might look like for Abrego Garcia and whether giving him his full slate of rights would require bringing him back to the United States.
The case is now entangled in a contentious effort by Xinis to determine exactly what the White House has and has not done to comply with the instructions from the justices. But it is almost certain to return to the Supreme Court, which could at that point provide a more detailed road map in the case.
The Supreme Court has taken a similar approach in the Texas case involving the Alien Enemies Act. As part of its ruling Friday, it sent the matter back to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals with instructions to hash out how much — and what sort of — notice that immigrants should be given before being deported under the law.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
