Supreme Court Demeans Unwanted Aliens
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
Stacked with right-wing extremists, the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s travel ban against Muslims from the wrong countries by a 5 – 4 majority last June.
At the time, the Court held that the Trump regime “set forth a sufficient national security justification to survive rational basis review” – despite no justification existing.
Trump’s Muslim ban is part of the US war on Islam. Denouncing the Supreme Court ruling at the time, ACLU immigration rights project director Omar Jadwat minced no words saying:
“This ruling will go down in history as one of the Supreme Court’s great failures. It repeats the mistakes of the Korematsu decision, upholding Japanese-American imprisonment and swallows wholesale government lawyers’ flimsy national security excuse for the ban instead of taking seriously the president’s own explanation for his action.”
“It is ultimately the people of this country who will determine its character and future. The court failed today, and so the public is needed more than ever.”
“We must make it crystal clear to our elected representatives: If you are not taking actions to rescind and dismantle Trump’s Muslim ban, you are not upholding this country’s most basic principles of freedom and equality.”
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court again ruled against undocumented aliens of the wrong race and ethnicity.
By a 5 – 4 majority in Nielsen v Preap, it ruled that unwanted aliens with criminal records (most often misdemeanors too minor to matter) can be indefinitely detained – even years after being released.
Time and again, countless numbers of individuals in the US are wrongfully charged with offenses never committed. Nearly always they’re disadvantaged people of color and others too poor to afford a proper legal defense.
Justice in America isn’t blind. Privileged individuals are treated one way, less fortunate ones entirely different, along with countless numbers targeted for political reasons – thousands languishing in the nation’s gulag prison system unjustly.
Along with numerous other examples earlier, extremist Supreme Court justices made things worse by its March 19 ruling. They reinterpreted the letter and spirit of the law pertaining to detaining undocumented aliens.
Legislation enacted in 1996 permits detenting them after completing their sentence on charges wrongdoing, true or false.
The intent of the law excluded detaining them years after release. Tuesday’s High Court ruling changed its letter and spirit.
The ACLU represented undocumented aliens in Nielsen v. Preap, slamming the High Court ruling as follows, saying:
Individuals they represented “challenged the federal government’s sweeping interpretation of a 1996 law, arguing it expanded mandatory detention far beyond what Congress intended, resulting in gross violations of due process for thousands of immigrants.”
ACLU deputy legal director Cecillia Wang argued the case. She reacted to the ruling as follows, saying:
“For two terms in a row now, the Supreme Court has endorsed the most extreme interpretation of immigration detention statutes, allowing mass incarceration of people without any hearing, simply because they are defending themselves against a deportation charge. We will continue to fight the gross overuse of detention in the immigration system.”
The Obama regime grossly mistreated undocumented aliens, based on their race and ethnicity. Trump way exceeded his harshness.
On his watch, hundreds of thousands of unwanted aliens were arrested, harshly detained and deported – his policy unrelated to protecting national security.
It’s all about racial hatred toward unwanted people. White Christians and Jews are welcome, especially from favored nations. Treating them one way, people of color and Muslims another is flagrantly hostile to fundamental rule of law principles.
Refugees, asylum seekers, and others from the wrong countries are unwelcome in Trump’s America. Islamophobia and racial hatred reflect official regime policy.
Trump repeatedly turns truth on its head, calling unwanted aliens of the wrong race and ethnicity “thugs and gang members” – the bipartisan element infesting Washington, not desperate people seeking safe haven in the US to stay alive, to protect their family members.
They’re legitimate refugees and asylum seekers. Ones he referred to are fleeing repressive US-supported regimes in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, three of the world’s most violent nations.
ACLU immigrants’ rights project director Omar Jadwat earlier explained that “Congress very specifically said you can apply for asylum if you arrive in the United States regardless of whether you’re at a port of entry.”
“(A)nyone who reaches the United States” can apply for asylum. It’s the law of the land and international law.
Presidents have no legal authority to flout it, what Trump’s immigration policy is all about – supported by extremist Supremes, using their power against vulnerable people with none able to challenge their harshness.
Their ruling gives Trump regime hardliners license to conduct a reign of terror against unwanted aliens.
For them, the US is less safe than repressive homelands fled from – police injustice awaiting them.
They’ll be hunted down, rounded up, held in detention, kept in isolation, and brutalized by a regime hostile to the rights of ordinary people everywhere.
The US consistently denies justice to its most vulnerable – unwanted aliens of the wrong race and ethnicity defenseless against its viciousness.
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