As security professionals, we’re tasked with balancing urgent operational needs against fundamental legal and ethical frameworks. The recent deportation case involving the Trump administration’s invocation of the 1789 Alien Enemies Act represents a textbook example of security operations deliberately structured to evade accountability mechanisms. Please recognize a dangerous precedent that directly threatens the rule of law.

Accountability Evasion Game

The administration’s approach appears to have been meticulously designed to circumvent judicial review:

• Strategic Start: Signing the executive order on Friday night and deliberately not advertising it
• Rushed Execution: Creating a “mad scramble” to get planes airborne once word leaked
• Explicit Intent: Officials openly admitting “We wanted them on the ground first, before a judge could get the case”
• Planned Loopholes: Claiming international waters provided immunity from judicial orders

This operational structure mirrors tactics used in some of the most controversial security programs in recent history, where operations are deliberately moved outside normal accountability structures, then justified retroactively through technical legal arguments. It signals the White House was planning from the start to ignore laws it knew would deem its planning illegal.

False Security Dilemma

National security routinely is invoked to justify exceptional measures, but this is a false dilemma. The core question isn’t whether dangerous individuals should be removed from the country, it’s whether executive power can operate beyond judicial review simply by exploiting a race condition — moving quickly and invoking rarely-used wartime authorities.

The “ticking time bomb” scenario (or alternatively, the “boy who cried wolf” dynamic) is frequently invoked as justification for extraordinary measures. Yet it rarely holds up to scrutiny. Here, there was no imminent threat that required bypassing normal legal procedures. None. The rush was based on no justification at all. Rather, this was a calculated test case designed to show how ignoring judges very simply can be achieved, with the goal of expanded executive authority. Whether the deportations happened or not was never the White House concern as much as whether they could undermine rule of law somehow, somewhere. After that, no balance of power exists anymore, opening the flood gates to dictatorship.

Constitutional Ratchet

When security operations deliberately evade judicial oversight, they create what some might call a “ratchet effect.” Executive power expands during perceived emergencies and then rarely contracts afterward. Instead, new precedents normalize previously exceptional powers, in one direction (towards extreme control, away from balance).

The administration’s explicit stated strategy to rush this case to a Supreme Court they expect to rule in their favor reveals the true nature of the operation: never an urgent security matter, but an urgent power grab using deportees as pawns in a larger legal strategy to end the constitution.

Ethical Failure of Process Subversion

From an ethics perspective in National Security, this deliberate design of operations to evade accountability represents a fundamental breach of professional responsibility. Security and law enforcement professionals are bound by both legal and ethical constraints that go beyond mere operational objectives.

The administration’s approach reflects a troubling subversive mindset: that accountability structures are objections to be escaped or ignored rather than essential safeguards and guardrails. This isn’t merely a legal technicality, it’s a direct challenge to constitutional governance and the very concept of authority.

International Water Fallacy

Take the claim that planes in international airspace are beyond the reach of US courts, for example. This represents a clearly flawed theory of authority and boundaries. As with kidnapping or hostage situations, the location of victims doesn’t negate the originating jurisdiction’s authority. The entire operation—from detention to transport to deportation—constitutes a single continuous action that began on US soil under US authority. Imagine the US saying it can’t possibly look for a POW abroad to bring home because they aren’t presently on US soil. It’s nonsensical.

The US routinely asserts jurisdiction over its citizens and assets abroad when it suits government interests, showing the selective nature of this jurisdictional argument.

If this new flawed logic were widely accepted, it would create perverse incentives to rush people across borders, any borders anywhere, specifically to avoid judicial scrutiny. And if you really think about it this is how “America First” falls down most often. They pretend the border is absolute as a barrier to any interest or action, yet they immediately argue they can roll themselves into foreign countries with absolute freedom because anyone back in America can’t go through the wall they say now exists. A wall for thee not for me.

Supreme Court as Rubber Stamp

Perhaps most concerning is the explicit strategy to use these deportations as a Supreme Court softball for appointments setup to expand executive power. The administration welcomed the fight, with officials stating “This is headed to the Supreme Court. And we’re going to win.”

This instrumentalizes both the judiciary and the deportees themselves in a constitutional crisis. Rather than respecting the coordinate branches of government, it treats the courts as obstacles until reaching a favorable judicial forum to undermine the balance of power, strip the judiciary of its role by corrupting the top judges.

Another Way Forward

Security professionals must reject operations deliberately structured to evade accountability. True security requires:

1. Process Integrity: Following established baselines like legal procedures by planning to be more efficient or convenient
2. Judicial Respect: Recognizing legal teams and court orders as binding rather than advisory
3. Transparency: Building operations to invite scrutiny rather than avoid it
4. Constitutional Balance: Respecting separation of powers as a feature, a benefit from depth, not a bug

When security operations are deliberately designed to escape scrutiny until they can reach a sympathetic authority such as a corrupted judicial forum, we’ve moved from rule OF law to rule BY law, using captured and controlled legal mechanisms to legitimize actions after the fact rather than constrain them beforehand.

Those are the dictates of a dictatorship.

The security community must stand firm against this dangerous and poorly hidden precedent to end democracy. Our ultimate security comes not from unaccountable unilateral executive abuses, but from the constitutional guardrails that prevent any branch from accumulating so much unchecked power.