Undoing due process
The administration is ready to take away your day in court. If it can happen to one of us, it can happen to any of us
Perhaps we could stop focusing on innocence when the issue is due process.
It doesn’t matter that, as Axios notes, “Three-fourths of the Venezuelan migrants flown from Texas to a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador three weeks ago had no apparent criminal record, a CBS News 60 Minutes report out Sunday found.”
100% of the people shipped off to El Salvador could have had criminal records. It doesn’t matter.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident deported to a prison in El Salvador due to an “administrative error,” could have been in the U.S. illegally. It doesn’t matter. He could be a member of MS-13. It doesn’t matter.
Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University scholar sent to an ICE facility in Louisiana even though no charges were brought, could have committed murder. It doesn’t matter.
Each of these people is entitled to due process, legal representation, and their day in court.
The administration’s defense of these violations of every person’s rights would be ludicrous if it weren’t so terrifying.
“The Trump administration has defended its deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia — a Maryland man mistakenly sent to a prison in El Salvador — saying "due process does look different" for people they say are members of gangs the White House has designated as terrorist organizations.”
No, DHS, as court after court keeps saying, due process is the same for each and every person in the United States.
On your theory, DHS, the president could have designated the Democratic Party a terrorist organization and shipped Joe Biden off to El Salvador in the middle of the 2020 election.
Even the current Supreme Court, which has been no great friend to due process, seems to understand this.
As Andrew Weissmann pointed out on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show last night (listen on YouTube, starting at 38:40), talking about the case of the Venezuelans,
Turning to the 5-4 decision, I think people are really misreading this. … Nine justices rejected the Trump administration’s position that they could deport people without a hearing. That is the headline here, that the Court said that there has to be due process of law.
So no, New York Times, “U.S. Supreme Court Clears Way for Venezuelan Deportations to Resume, for Now” is not the headline news.
Surprisingly, it was the capitulant ABC News that got it mostly right: “Supreme Court OKs deporting Venezuelans -- with due process.”
This is absolutely bedrock to the rule of law, and the rule of law is what separates democracies from any of the various versions of autocracies that we seem to be careening towards. There’s no slippery slope here — we’re on the precipice.