The Supreme Court is back on the deportation beat. The Trump administration wants the justices to let it resume removing illegal aliens to third countries, nations other than the alien's home country, and the case could settle the question for good. USA Today has the rundown here.

What's at stake is simple. Under ordinary rules, an alien gets removed to his own country. Sometimes the home country won't take him, or taking him there is genuinely impractical. Federal law lets the Secretary of Homeland Security send him somewhere else that will accept him. That's the administration's whole case in a sentence.

The fight is over process. A district judge in Boston ruled that aliens must get a meaningful chance to argue they'll face persecution in the third country before they're put on the plane. The administration argues that remedy went beyond what the law requires, and that a flat, across-the-board notice rule hands a playbook to everyone trying to gum up removals. Both sides have now filed at the high court. The justices will decide whether to take it up or let the lower rulings stand.

The critics, of course, say third-country removals aren't safe. You'll hear the word "unsafe" a lot this week. Boil it down and what they mean is they don't want the removals to happen at all. The safety argument is the last trench. If you can't stop the arrest, can't stop the detention, can't stop the removal order, you argue the destination is too dangerous. Same crowd that called detention cruel, then called ankle monitors cruel, then called doing nothing cruel. There's no version of enforcement they'd sign off on, and I stopped waiting for one years ago.

I'll say what I believe plainly: enforcement works best when the consequence is real. A removal to a country you didn't plan on tends to focus the mind, and I'd bet good money it crosses fewer minds after that. That's my read from twenty-six years on the line, offered as exactly that. The critics will call it a talking point. They'd know.

The administration's position in short: follow the statute as written, give aliens the individual review the law already requires, and stop letting a single district judge set nationwide removal policy from the bench. The other side wants a procedural hurdle in front of every flight. We'll see whether five justices think the law means what it says.

The count so far: district ruling requiring notice, Supreme Court petition pending. When the ruling lands, I'll have it here with the numbers first, the spin never.