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Constitutional Rights Apply to Everyone, Including Immigrants

Donald Trump occupies the oval office but he cannot erase the Constitution. The Constitution protects everyone, including the undocumented and non-citizens.

If you are not a citizen, here are your most basic rights, according to the National Immigration Law Center, which joined with the ACLU and other groups yesterday to hand Donald Trump his first judicial defeat over his outrageous executive order discriminating against Muslims and refugees according to country of origin:

  • Officers from any law enforcement agency, including ICE and the Border Patrol, must show you their ID if you ask for it. You have the right to ask them to show you an identity document.
  • You have the right to remain silent. You are not required to answer any questions or sign any papers about where you’re from or what your immigration status is.
  • You have the right to call and speak with an attorney. Be prepared. Look up the phone number of a lawyer or organization that provides legal help to immigrants. Then memorize their phone number, or write it down and carry it with you wherever you go.

[More...]

  • Begin planning with your family tonight about what each of you will do if one of you is approached or detained by immigration or other law enforcement authorities.

Here's David Cole on why Donald Trump's discriminatory executive order violates the Constitution.

The protests continue, in Brooklyn, Denver, Los Angeles and around the world. It's time to litigate, not reach across the aisle. Donate to the ACLU and the National Immigration Law Center, and International Refugee Assistance Project.

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  • Display: Sort:
    An ancien regime, (5.00 / 1) (#2)
    by KeysDan on Sun Jan 29, 2017 at 10:40:35 AM EST
    headed by the Enfant Terrible.   Not only is the executive order a rash, unconstitutional act, but also, a stain on the country.

    Comment deleted for falsely stating (3.67 / 3) (#7)
    by Jeralyn on Sun Jan 29, 2017 at 04:06:56 PM EST
    in a propaganda comment promoting the World Socialist Party that the Secure Fence Act was enacted by Democrats. It was a GW Bush bill. Here's a photo of him signing it.

    The 1996 The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) was a Clinton bill but it contained nothing like what Trump is promoting.

    And The Immigration and Naturalization Act 8 U.S.C. § 1152(a)(1)(A) forbids discrimination in issuance of visas based on a person's race, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence.

    The comment which purports to blame Democrats for Trump's ban, was trolling and is not allowed here.

    Untruths (none / 0) (#12)
    by Andreas on Mon Jan 30, 2017 at 12:29:57 PM EST
    I suppose that Jeralyn is referring to a comment I posted yesterday. The comment included three paragraphs from a recent article (about the protests against the ban) by the WSWS.

    Her comment contains several untruths.

    1. The World Socialist Web Site is not published by a "World Socialist Party" but by the International Committee of the Fourth International.

    2. She claims that the quote falsly stated "that the Secure Fence Act was enacted by Democrats". That is not correct. The deleted quote stated this: "The Democrats provided the necessary votes ... for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was supported by then-senators Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden and Charles Schumer."

    3. Regarding her claim that the IIRIRA "contained nothing like what Trump is promoting" does not seem to object to any factual statement in the quote. (That may be a matter of opinion, but it illustrates why democratic rights of immigrants should not be trusted to the Democratic Party.)

    4. The comment also did not "purport to blame Democrats for Trump's ban" (that would be to simple). The comment warned that the recent history of the Democratic Party shows why the defense of immigrants and refugees can not be based on that party.


    Parent
    Reposting a deleted comment (5.00 / 1) (#13)
    by Yman on Mon Jan 30, 2017 at 12:39:48 PM EST
    Probably not the best idea.

    Parent
    Incredibly (none / 0) (#1)
    by Repack Rider on Sun Jan 29, 2017 at 10:28:17 AM EST
    ...when I have called GOP members of Congress to complain about torture at Abu Graib, Gitmo, etc., the staffers would point out that the people we were torturing were not citizens.

    As we know, the Eighth Amendment is written in the passive voice, torture "...shall not be inflicted..." [by the United States].

    It doesn't say who can and can't be tortured, it says no torture shall take place.  On anyone.

    Separation of powers (none / 0) (#3)
    by lawstudent on Sun Jan 29, 2017 at 12:20:02 PM EST
    It appears DHS does not have any intentions of following the Court rulings (or the Constitution, for that matter).  So what now?  


    a show cause order to (5.00 / 1) (#9)
    by Jeralyn on Sun Jan 29, 2017 at 04:25:36 PM EST
    demonstrate to the court why they are not in contempt of court.

    Criminal contempt charges if possible.

    Parent

    So there is no check (none / 0) (#4)
    by Militarytracy on Sun Jan 29, 2017 at 01:44:41 PM EST
    As President Andrew Jackson once ... (5.00 / 2) (#6)
    by Donald from Hawaii on Sun Jan 29, 2017 at 03:17:35 PM EST
    ... sardonically observed after the Cherokee Nation had won a supposed reprieve at the U.S. Supreme Court, enjoining the federal government from summarily removing the tribe by armed force from their Southern Appalachian homeland to the Indian Territory of present-day Oklahoma per the Indian Removal Act of 1830 (Worcester v. Georgia, 1832):

    "[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision. Now, let him enforce it."

    Jackson thus ignored the U.S. Supreme Court, and directed federal troops to continue with the forcible evictions of the Cherokee people anyway. An estimated 30% of the Cherokee population subsequently perished on the "Trail of Tears."

    The only true hard check on a president's power is the threat of impeachment and removal by Congress. Even then, it may be a close-run thing. According to stories, White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig was apparently so worried that President Richard Nixon would employ the U.S. Armed Forces in an attempt to retain power in 1974, he quietly issued a directive to the Pentagon and U.S. military bases that any orders from the White House which were not issued through the Chief of Staff's office were to be ignored.

    Defiance of the Federal Court is no small matter, as your own State of Alabama has learned time and again over the last six decades in various confrontations with federal judicial authority and jurisdiction. Yet each time, federal authority eventually prevailed. Gov. George Wallace stepped aside and the University of Alabama was desegregated. Judge Walter P. Jones stood down, and state courtrooms in Montgomery and elsewhere were similarly desegregated. And Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from the State's high court, and there is marriage quality in Alabama.

    But at the federal level, the Office of the President is invested with enormous powers, particularly in the president's position as commander in chief of the U.S. military. It was President John F. Kennedy who ultimately acted as agent for the Federal Court in enforcing its decision to desegregate the University of Alabama, when he federalized Alabama's National Guard and ordered it to Tuscaloosa.

    But what would have happened, had President Kennedy instead been in agreement with Gov. Wallace back in 1962? In the face of a headstrong chief executive who's determined to have his way regardless of the opposition arrayed against him, our Constitution may be a lot more fragile than we would otherwise like to believe. With the exception of Jackson's aforementioned defiance in Worcester v. Georgia, I don't believe that it's ever really been tested to the logical extent possible.

    Aloha.

    Parent

    Jackson does appear (none / 0) (#8)
    by TrevorBolder on Sun Jan 29, 2017 at 04:10:12 PM EST
    To be the closest thing resembling The Donald

    Parent
    And still not very close at all (none / 0) (#10)
    by jondee on Mon Jan 30, 2017 at 08:48:13 AM EST
    Jackson grew up in dire poverty in a totally different world, that might as well have been another planet, in the late 18th - early 19th century. He wasn't a trust fund baby who had the world handed to him. He knew what war was from first-hand; knew the hardscrabble life of the lowly enlisted man and had had to face his own tenuous mortality numerous times in a way that Trump never has.

    The Andrew.

    He and Trump are about as much alike as a Pterodactyl and French poodle.

    Parent

    Bernie Madoff.. (5.00 / 1) (#11)
    by desertswine on Mon Jan 30, 2017 at 12:08:46 PM EST
    closely resembles Trump.  The Bernie, that is.

    Parent
    ... clearly could not be any more different from one another, Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump likely share a similar temperament. Like Trump, Jackson was very thin-skinned, did not take at all kindly to personal criticism, and had little or no tolerance for dissent.

    But any further similarity between the two abruptly ends there, because unlike Trump and as you noted, Jackson was a product of a very hardscrabble life and upbringing. Taken prisoner at age 14 during the American Revolution, Jackson had his face slashed by a British Army officer's sword when he refused to shine the officer's boots. It left a lifelong scar on his cheek, and a burning hatred for the British that Jackson nurtured until his dying day.

    One crossed the ill-tempered "Old Hickory" at his peril, and at least one man and his family would dearly come to regret it. In 1806, then a former member of the Tennessee State Senate and a practicing member of the bar, Jackson killed fellow plantation owner Charles Dickinson in a duel after the latter accused him of reneging on a horse race bet, and then further insulted his wife Rachel by calling her a bigamist.

    In fact, Rachel Jackson was indeed a bigamist, though likely not by knowing choice; she had married Andrew not knowing that her first husband had never finalized their divorce. Still, Andrew seethed at the insult to his wife. Further, the National Review had subsequently published a public statement from Dickinson which accused Jackson of being a "worthless scoundrel," an "equivocator" and a "coward." (Yes, even back then, the National Review's editors never failed to take a swipe at Democrats, whenever given the opportunity.)

    His honor and integrity thus publicly impugned, Jackson called out Dickinson in challenge. On May 30, 1806, the two rivals met for their "interview" -- the polite colloquialism of the day with reference to dueling, since the practice was at the time outlawed in many parts of the country, including Tennessee -- at Harrison's Mills in Logan, Kentucky.

    At the first signal from their seconds, Dickinson fired and his bullet lodged in Jackson's upper chest, missing his heart. (Critics would later lament in half-jest that Dickinson missed Jackson's heart because his opponent lacked one.) Jackson put his hand over the wound to staunch the flow of blood, and stayed standing long enough to aim and pull the trigger on his gun, only to have it misfire.

    Nominally, the etiquette of dueling stipulated that the confrontation was over at that moment. But in a clear breach of longstanding protocol, Jackson immediately re-cocked his gun and took aim at Dickinson again. This time, the gun fired successfully and Dickinson fell mortally wounded, to the obvious consternation and protestations of his seconds, who subsequently complained to local authorities to no avail.

    Although Andrew Jackson eventually recovered from the severe gunshot wound, Dickinson's bullet remained lodged inside his chest cavity, causing him chronic pain for the rest of his life. He was never charged in the shooting, and any potential political damage he might have otherwise suffered for the duel was negligible. His opponents in the 1824 and 1828 presidential elections tended to harp more about Rachel Jackson's bigamy, and generally declined to mention her husband's commission of a homicide.

    Aloha.

    Parent