White House May Try to Suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus in Order to Facilitate Deportation of Migrants
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller recently said the Trump Administration is “actively looking” into suspending the writ of habeas corpus in order to prevent immigrants from challenging their deportation in court:
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said Friday that President Trump and his team are “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus as part of the administration’s immigration crackdown.
“Well, the Constitution is clear — and that of course is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller told reporters at the White House.
A writ of habeas corpus compels authorities to produce an individual they are holding and to justify their confinement.
It’s been a key avenue migrants have used to challenge pending deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely-used 18th-century power Trump cited to deport Venezuelan nationals he’s accused of being gang members to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador.
If the writ of habeas corpus is suspended, the consequences would not be limited to supposedly illegal migrants. Legal immigrants and US citizens could be detained without due process, as well.
I have been warning about this implication of the argument that illegal migration is “invasion” for a long time. See, e.g., here and here.
If illegal migration and cross-border drug smuggling are “invasion,” that means we are in a state of invasion at virtually all times, since these activities have been ubiquitous for so long as we have had the War on Drugs and significant migration restrictions. That is both dan
Article from Reason.com
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