Donald Trump suggested in a tweet on Sunday that illegal aliens caught at the border should be immediately returned to their home country “with no judges or court cases.”
We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Most children come without parents…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2018
….Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years! Immigration must be based on merit – we need people who will help to Make America Great Again!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2018
The US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment guarantees the right to “due process of law” in criminal proceedings. In 1953, the Supreme Court clarified this right extended to non-US citizens.
The Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding case concluded that the Attorney General “did not have the authority to order the permanent exclusion and deportation of a lawful permanent resident of the United States without providing notice of the charges against him and the opportunity to be heard.”
Trump’s tweets came amid a flurry of on-air talk on the Sunday political shows about upcoming immigration policy from Republican lawmakers.
Several other Supreme Court rulings extended the right of due process to illegal aliens, including the right to appear before an immigration judge.
That Trump doesn’t understand the Constitution is not surprising. But his simple-minded tweets revealing to the world his ignorance of our founding document are astounding.
What of asylum seekers? If Trump’s notions of immigration enforcement had been in effect the last 60 years, several million people would have been returned to where they came to face certain death in Communist countries. The only way to determine if an asylum seeker’s claim is legitimate or not is to get him in front of a judge to plead his case. That’s due process and that’s what Trump wishes to deny illegals.
How can a president enforce the rule of law when he is ignorant of it?
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