Recent actions of the Trump administration, most glaringly the administration’s summary deportation around two hundred people to a notorious Salvadoran prison is an action that should make every American sit up and pay attention. If this is allowed to pass unchecked we have crossed the line into something like the totalitarian state of George Orwell’s cautionary tale “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.
I am no legal scholar, but I was taught early on in school that the Founders, the men who wrote the U.S. Constitution, produced in that document a system of “checks and balances” establishing a tension designed to restrain potential excesses by one man or group of men. The Founders composed a government consisting of Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches that would review and restrain each others’ actions. Importantly, the U.S. Constitution tries to guarantee certain rights to the people living under it, rights that are enumerated both in the body of the Constitution and in the soon-appended Bill of Rights. In my lifetime I’ve heard a lot about the Bill of Rights’ free speech, freedom of religion, the “right to bear arms”, and freedom from self incrimination (“pleading the Fifth), and much less about the fundamental mechanisms by which those rights and freedoms are supposed to be protected. It is these protections that are now being tested. It is imperative that we understand and defend them.
Embedded in the body of the U.S. Constitution in Article One, Section 9, clause 2 is this: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” From wikipedia:
A writ of habeas corpus is a legal action against unlawful detainment that commands a law enforcement agency [think ICE] or other body that has a person in custody to have a court inquire into the legality of the detention. The court may order the person released if the reason for detention is deemed insufficient or unjustifiable. The Constitution further provides that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus may not be suspended "unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it".
To be sure, lawyers for the Trump administration tried to pull a fig leaf over this naked abuse of power by declaring that the U.S. is being “invaded” by Venezuela, a ruse that by itself nods to the challenge it presents to our right to protection under a writ of habeas corpus. Not surprisingly, the administration cleverly picked on people whom they can conveniently characterize as “other” (maybe non-citizen, maybe people of color), accusing them not of specific crimes but of gang membership—all without offering any proof or means to check that proof. With additional cleverness the administration deported them to a foreign prison which they can pretend is out of reach. Do not lose sight of what is going on here: First they came for…
If We the People allow this naked abuse of a right afforded to people living under our Constitution we are giving in to a regime that, if unchecked, will continue to run roughshod over every other personal right.
This is a Patrick Henry “Give me Liberty or Give me Death” moment for our country.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Note that this administration is daily testing the limits of Constitutional protections by using what are thinly veiled threats and extortion to demand compliance of both the judiciary and the press. This cannot stand.
P.S.S. If you didn’t understand habeas corpus until now I right with you. Until last week my understanding of the term was only that it was a Latin and probably had something to do with a corpse in a murder case. Here’s the definition from my dictionary:
a writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court, especially to secure the person's release unless lawful grounds are shown for their detention: his application for habeas corpus | a writ of habeas corpus. • the legal right to apply for a habeas corpus: Europe was first to introduce habeas corpus and the jury system.