What process is due? They have broken into our country and are here illegally. They clearly didn’t follow the legal process for coming into our country but now are demanding that our legal process be engaged to allow them to remain here, either for a time or permanently.
They include many rapists and murderers. During the time they have been illegally in our country they have gravely injured or killed our fellow Americans like Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray, to say nothing of the drugs, human trafficking and terrorists who have infiltrated our country.
Now they demand “due process.” (I find it richly hypocritical that the same individuals who would not grant President Trump due process during the lawfare strategy against him now scream to high heaven about its importance for illegal criminals.)
I don’t know what the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately do but allowing due process to criminal illegals will be hard to swallow for millions of Americans, especially given the emergency declarations like the Alien Enemies Act that President Trump has invoked.
Nevertheless, what process is due to these criminal illegals?
I would argue that if due process is owed, it is a very light standard. By that I mean it would be legally satisfactory for our Department of Homeland Security to simply document that the individual being deported is, in fact, an illegal criminal alien. Then, to the plane and out of the country they go.
However, while I am on this topic, please allow me to address a much larger one:
Our constitutional republic sets up a tripartite system of government, with Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches each comprising 1/3rd of our federal government. The three branches are inarguably co-equal. That means they all possess the same amount of constitutional authority and are limited to their rightful places by our Separation of Powers and its checks and balances.
In this instance, though, we have one branch of government—federal judges in the Judicial Branch—telling another branch of government, the Executive Branch—i.e., President Trump, that he cannot exercise his core constitutional power to protect and defend our country from the invasion of illegals.
Well, if the three branches of government are truly co-equal, I don’t think a federal judge has the constitutional authority to prevent President Trump from exercising his own constitutional authority to deport these criminal illegals.
So, this is the larger question: who checks the Judicial Branch? Who gets to tell the Judicial Branch when it’s exceeding its authority? The Framers of our Constitution certainly did not set up the U.S. Supreme court to be superior to the other two branches; again, the three branches are to be co-equal.
I am also fully aware of the case of Marbury v. Madison in which Chief Justice John Marshall claimed and declared that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Well, while a time-honored precedent, Marbury is not in the U.S. Constitution. For our purposes, all the Framers granted the federal courts was the authority to hear and decide concretely presented “cases and controversies,” certainly not nationwide injunctions blocking the president from exercising his core powers.
So, again, who tells the Judicial Branch, which is, again, nothing more than a co-equal branch—it has exceeded its authority? Constitutional law expert, Jonathan Turley, asserts that “federal judges have overextended themselves, they have intruded into areas of Article II, which is presidential authority … and the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to support President Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies to deport over 200 members of the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Agua.”
Some constitutional scholars may disagree but if I were one of his attorneys, I would advise President Trump in this fashion:
“Sir, the entire authority of one of our three co-equal branches of government is vested completely and exclusively in you. As such, I believe your core constitutional powers as both Chief Executive and Commander in Chief provide you with unquestioned constitutional and legal authority to deport criminal illegals from our country. As a result, I would announce that you are respectfully not following this particular federal judge’s order because, in your view, it transcends the authority of a co-equal branch of government.”
The Framers were purposeful and explicit that none of the three branches of government were to be superior to, or more important than, the others. That must be obliged here.
Royal Alexander
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