By John & Nisha Whitehead
It’s no joke: America is becoming a Constitution-free zone.
Little by little, our rights are being whittled down in the name of national security.
Where do you draw the line?
How much tyranny will Americans tolerate in the name of national security?
At what point does this slippery slope of power grabs lead to dictatorship?
Will we let border police trample on the rights of everyone they encounter, including legal residents and citizens? Turn a blind eye when men, women and children are forcibly detained by gangs of plainclothes agents and made to disappear? Will we accept a national ID card that enables the government to target individuals and groups it deems undesirable? Will we tolerate AI-powered surveillance cameras and drones that track us more effectively than they protect us? Will we censor ourselves, fearing that any expression of dissent will mark us as anti-government?
Will we abandon the constitutional principles our founders fought for? This is the bargain the police state demands of us.
Take immigration, for example.
President Donald Trump wants us to believe that the nation’s security is so threatened by illegal immigrants that we should tolerate roving bands of ICE and border patrol agents disregarding the U.S. Constitution at every turn.
But these government agents aren’t just disregarding it—they’re trampling it with the blessing of the man who swore to “preserve, protect and defend” that very same Constitution.
First Amendment rights to free speech, assembly, and protest. Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Fifth Amendment guarantees of due process. Sixth Amendment protections ensuring a right to legal counsel. Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishments. Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection under the law.
All of these and more are being imperiously swept aside in the Trump Administration’s pursuit of an America “for Americans and Americans only.”
Trump has invoked wartime powers under the Alien Enemies Act to justify the expulsion of illegal immigrants, whom Trump has likened to terrorists, killers, criminals, and enemies of the state.
However, with national security being used as a pretext to strip away rights on a larger scale than just criminals, the individuals targeted by the Trump Administration’s overreach represent a broader cross-section of American society: immigrants, both documented and undocumented, who live and work in the mainland of the United States. Individuals whose visas allow them to legally reside in the U.S. are also being rounded up and made to disappear without due process.
These arbitrary roundups and deportations represent a pattern of government overreach, targeting individuals based on nationality, perceived political dissent, or other subjective criteria. Such actions not only violate due process but also suppress First Amendment rights.
Moreover, these actions are not limited to just immigrants or perceived enemies—they extend to anyone daring to challenge the status quo. Whether it’s activists, academics, or everyday citizens, being targeted for political expression is an assault on the very essence of free speech.
In this way, these round-ups represent the beginning of the slippery slope, leading not just to arbitrary detentions and the expansion of private prisons as an extension of the police state but to an eventual authoritarian regime where dissent is suppressed, and constitutional rights are discarded.
This is not just happening at the southern border.
These round-ups are increasingly occurring in cities like New York, Boston, and northern Virginia, with many U.S. citizens also being swept up in warrantless searches, surveillance, and overreach from federal and local law enforcement.
Where once the nation’s border constituted a thin line, it is becoming an ever-thickening zone dominated by authoritarianism and an utter disregard for the rule of law.
This zone impacts millions of Americans who have never been near a border—citizens who live in everyday places, like urban and suburban areas, yet are subject to government overreach.
As journalist Todd Miller explains, that expanding border region now extends “100 miles inland around the United States.” Nearly 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, or 197.4 million people) now live within that 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone.
In this authoritarian reshaping of America, no one is safe, not even in their own homes.
The government’s ever-expanding, Constitution-free zone translates to greater numbers of Americans being subject to warrantless searches, ID checkpoints, transportation checks, and even surveillance on private property far beyond the boundaries of the borderlands.
From facial recognition software to mass data collection, surveillance technology is being used to monitor immigrants and ordinary citizens alike who are not suspected of any crime.
Despite the propaganda coming from the White House, the looming problem is not so much that the U.S. is being invaded by hostile forces at the border, but rather that the U.S. Constitution is under assault from within by a power-hungry cabal at the highest levels of power.
Before long, the only Americans qualified to live freely in Trump’s America will be those who march in lockstep with the Deep State’s dictates, and even absolute compliance is no guarantee of safety.
It used to be that the Constitution was our only reliable safety net, but that is being systematically dismantled.
I make clear in my book “Battlefield America: The War on the American People” and in its fictional counterpart, “The Erik Blair Diaries,” the government is now the greatest threat to our safety, and there’s no border wall big enough to protect us from these ruffians in our midst.
The answer to this growing tyranny begins with us—“We the people.”
The Constitution should not be negotiable. Freedom is not negotiable.
You want to make America great again? Start by making America free again.
—The Rutherford Institute