So, the administration and Supreme Court seem to be of the opinion that it’s OK for the State to grab [people] off the street and [do stuff] to them without a court being involved.
Or even being able to intervene.
As in:
- State grabs person
- State deports person
- State refuses to prove to a court that this person could legally be deported
And this is what the Supreme Court seems to think is OK.
And no, that is actually very much not OK.
The whole “prove it” step up there is what the courts are actually for.
It’s how the State demonstrates that it’s doing it’s job correctly.
(Rather than, say just for example, stomping its jackboots through the scattered rubble of the Constitution. Not to get all metaphorical.)
But this is not actually anything new.
The U.S. has long treated the due process requirement in the Constitution as allowing the State to design whatever process it wanted and treating that requirement as met as long as the State followed that process.
It’s kinda like corporate certifications: you don’t have to prove that your processes do anything in particular (like, say, guarantee that the State is respecting Constitutionally-guaranteed rights), you just have to prove that you’re following them.
(Though the State at least used to have to prove that they were following them; dropping that part is new. And also very, very wrong. I kinda can’t stress that enough, actually.)
But the processes they’ve made for dealing with non-citizens have been ludicrous for a very long time.
They’ve had over-empowered agents, special courts, secret courts and limitations on appeals when dealing with immigration for decades now.
And the thing about slippery slopes is that they don’t necessarily mean your country is about to slide off the brink into oblivion, but yeah it may just do that. And you can’t really tell in advance which slip is going to bring that last drop.
And the U.S. has been sliding down this slope for quite a while.
It may be too late for the U.S. to climb back up, but it’s never too late for the citizens to insist that it’s gone too far.
When we do manage to re-set the State to a reasonable understanding of due process, that State may very well not be the United States of America any more.
But whatever it’s called, it’ll be better than what we have now.
