April 20, 2025
Dear editor;
This concerns current deportations without due process.
Regardless of how one feels toward documented or undocumented immigrants in this country, ideally, all persons on American soil are entitled by the U.S. Constitution to due process under the law. I say “ideally” because Black Americans have been routinely denied due process since ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, Japanese Americans were sent to concentration camps during World War II, and we must not forget the genocide of indigenous Americans. Yet, due process is an ideal we aspire to and our success at its achievement has been admired worldwide.
Until recently: Earlier this month, the Donald Trump Administration authorized deportation of bus-loads of individuals to a mega-prison in El Salvador, allegedly defying a federal judge’s order against doing so because the deportees’ rights to due process were violated; therefore, we do not know it if these people were guilty of heinous crimes as the Administration claims, guilty of any crimes, or whether they were even undocumented, nor should it matter. Mr. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is one of the deportees sent to prison by mistake by the D.O.J.’s own admission! The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Garcia’s return and they refused, smearing Garcia’s character and the lower court judges who had the temerity to rule in favor of the Constitution and against the D.O.J./Trump agenda.
The important issue is deportations from this country without due process are illegal. Judge J. Harve Wilkenson, 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in my opinion says it best: “If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard to Court Orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?” U.S. Judge James Boasberg states: “The Government’s actions demonstrate a willful disregard for (the Courts) Order (to discontinue deportations) and is sufficient to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.” And so it goes.
To the Chas: Thanks for my automatic enrollment. I will do my best.
Peace.
Dave Hoehne, Aurora