Our Constitutional Rights Apply to All Persons!

 

I applaud the decision made by Federal District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong on July 11 in a southern California case. She ruled that ICE officers cannot rely solely on:

·        a person's apparent race or ethnicity;

·        the fact that they're speaking Spanish or English with an accent;

·        their presence at a particular location like a bus stop or a day laborer pickup site; or

·        the type of work one does

to base a “reasonable suspicion” which would otherwise permit an immigration officer to be stop someone.

Normally, for criminal apprehensions, law enforcement needs probable cause – a reasonable belief, supported by facts and circumstances, that a crime has been committed and the person to be apprehended committed it. However, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have specific authority to enforce immigration laws, including apprehending individuals suspected of violating those laws, interpreted as a “reasonable suspicion”.

The basis for search and seizure laws is the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The judge said that all individuals, regardless of immigration status, share in the rights guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth amendments.

This ruling implies that it is illegal to conduct mass apprehensions or stop large groups of people in public places to search for undocumented individuals. This would effectively block a tactic favored by the Trump administration—using large, public shows of force to intimidate undocumented immigrants into self-deporting and to discourage others from entering the country illegally.

This ruling works hand in hand with the ruling by another federal judge in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case that detainees are entitled to a hearing to determine whether they will be deported.  The Firth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says (in part):  “. . . nor shall any person . . .  be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; . . .” 

In practice, procedural due process means that the government must give people a chance to defend themselves in a fair hearing before infringing on their rights. In other words, they must be given notice of what they are being accused of and have the right to be heard in their defense. Without this hearing at which a factual determination is made whether the grounds for detention are met, it is not known whether the detention is legal.

Without these protections decided by the judges, none of us would be safe from illegal apprehension and/or deportation. If an immigration officer could stop someone speaking a foreign language, who appears to be of an ethnicity other than white, at job seeking location, or at a workplace suspected of having non-documented workers, what would stop ICE from apprehending any U.S. citizen? If your neighbor, co-worker, friend, or person is illegally detained or deported, you are equally at risk. What applies to one applies to all.

These rights of citizens and applied to “all persons” by way of the two amendments are the cornerstone of American justice, i.e., the rule of law. The United States must remain a “a nation of laws, not of men”.

I pledged to support and defend the U.S. Constitution
when I was sworn in as a State Representative in Michigan in 2011.

Prepared and paid for by Olson Senate Committee, P.O. Box 15, Prior Lake, MN 55372