Supreme Court denies three ways to pause a deportation, all in one Tuesday ruling.

…(cont) This is not the first time this fall the Court has made that exact move. On September 24, Attorney General Todd Blanche said the administration would appeal after the 1st Circuit dissolved a stay and let stand a ruling against the government's third-country deportation framework. Five days later, on September 29, the Supreme Court granted that appeal, 6 to 3, staying the lower court, clearing the government to resume sending people to countries that are not theirs, and setting oral argument for December. The justices did not rule on the legality of the policy then either. They just let it run.

What "let it run" means showed up on 60 Minutes on October 23: immigration judges had already ruled, case by case, that specific people could not be sent to specific countries because they would likely face persecution or torture there. The third countries took them anyway. Some forced the deportees back out, into the nations the judges had already ruled against.

That is the pattern under Tuesday's order. The Court does not need to decide a case is right. It only needs to decline, again and again, to decide it is wrong before the removal happens. By the time December's argument arrives and the justices finally reach the merits of the third-country framework, the people that finding was written to protect will already be wherever the deal sent them. The docket stays open. The door, as of Tuesday, does not.