Discuss the constitutional safeguards available to a person facing deportation as an illegal immigrant in India. Examine recent concerns over executive SOPs bypassing due process.

Article 21 guarantees life and personal liberty to every "person", not only citizens, so even a suspected foreigner cannot be removed except by a procedure that is fair and reasonable. The Supreme Court's September 2026 notice to the Centre and Maharashtra on an alleged push-back into Bangladesh [4] shows why these safeguards need reinforcement.

Constitutional and statutory safeguards

• Article 21 — deportation must follow a "procedure established by law", which must be just and non-arbitrary, not a bare executive instruction.
• Article 22(1)-(2) — grounds of arrest must be communicated and the person produced before a Magistrate within 24 hours; the Magistrate is the first independent check on whether nationality was ever determined.
• Article 14 — enforcement cannot profile people by language or ethnicity instead of documents.
• Articles 32 and 226 — habeas corpus and writ remedies, the route used by the deportee's son [4].
• Statutory layer: the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 consolidates four repealed colonial laws [2][3], and provides an appellate authority to confirm, modify or reverse orders [1].

Concerns over executive SOPs

• The MHA's SOP of 2 May 2025 operates as an internal instruction, yet decides liberty — its legality is now under challenge [4].
• No speaking order: unlike Assam's Foreigners Tribunals, a border "push-back" leaves no written, appealable finding for courts to test.
• Reversed burden: Section 16 places on the individual the burden of proving she is not a foreigner [1] — impossible to discharge once she is removed before verification.
• Confused registers: deletion from electoral rolls during Special Intensive Revision is treated as a citizenship finding, though rolls only record voters [4].
• Diffused accountability between State police and central forces.

Security at a porous border is a legitimate state interest, but speed and safeguards are not opposites. Requiring a signed nationality finding, magisterial production, and exhaustion of the Act's own appeal before removal would make the 2025 framework both effective and faithful to Article 21.