No. of Recommendations: 2
The current administration has already demonstrated its willingness to deny anyone and everyone access to the appropriate courts. Have they yet, though? "Anyone and everyone"? I'm not aware of any circumstances where the Administration has argued that a U.S. citizen should not have access to a court. They have certainly taken a very extreme position on how few due process protections they believe
non-citizens are entitled to. But for good or bad, they're not acting without a colorable legal claim.
Take, for example, administrative warrants. That sure seems bad, right? However, they're acting under clear statutory authority when they do that. Congress specifically gave ICE the power to detain immigrants with administrative warrants. It's right there in 8 USC 1226:
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:8%20section:1226%20edition:prelim)%20OR%20(granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1226)&f=treesort&edition=prelim&num=0&jumpTo=true#substructure-location_a:~:text=(a)%20Arrest%2C%20detention,provided%20such%20authorization.
Is that
good? Arguably not. Is it
constitutional? Probably, though there's plenty of arguments about it. But it's not at all ridiculous that the Administration is saying that it can do this. Congress specifically said they could!
So too with the summary deportations without a hearing, because the law provides that many immigrants are
subject to summary deportations without a hearing. Is that good? Plenty of reasons why it's not. But Congress wrote into the 1996 amendments to the Immigration and Naturalization Act that the agencies had the power to do this. They're following the law! Is the law Constitutional? Again, plenty of arguments about that - though parts of it were already upheld by SCOTUS in a 7-2 decision (Breyer and Ginsburg both signed on):
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19-161...What I think is happening is that lots of people are appalled that the federal statutes and Constitution don't afford the same rights to immigrants, and especially not to immigrants who are here unlawfully, as they do to citizens. And maybe they're right to be appalled. But just because the Administration has chosen to actually implement the appalling powers that have been granted to them does not mean that they are acting
unlawfully in so doing, such that we can (or should) simply assume that they'll start taking the same actions against citizens when such actions are clearly and inarguably illegal.
