The Conversation | S Platt/Getty
50,000 immigrants in July and August 2026; almost 80% of those migrants did not have a criminal record…. This scale of immigration enforcement raises fundamental philosophical questions: What ethical obligations do governments have to prospective migrants? And what claims to admission do migrants have? As a scholar of migration ethics, I have studied the arguments philosophers make about migration. Many philosophers claim that immigration should be understood as a human right. From their perspective, governments have an important responsibility to tread carefully when denying entry to migrants and especially when deporting them.