Noah Feldman, Columnist

'Bad Hombres' Loom Over Supreme Court

Deportation case could be influenced by Trump's politics.

January 17, 2017 at 7:20 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Anti-illegal immigration.
Photographer: Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images

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Is it lawful to deport immigrants who commit “aggravated felonies”? Or is that language unconstitutionally vague? The U.S. Supreme Court considered the question Tuesday, in a case that’s proof of De Tocqueville’s dictum, “There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one." Although the legal issues are subtle, the atmospherics of the case are all about Donald Trump’s warnings of “bad hombres” illegally entering the U.S.

The case involves James Garcia Dimaya, a Filipino citizen who’s been a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. since 1992. On two occasions, in 2007 and 2009, Dimaya was convicted of burglary under California law, and sentenced each time to two years in prison. On the basis of his convictions, the Department of Homeland Security sought his deportation.