|It seems to me the corporate media is doing a lousy job of explaining immigration law to the masses. Actually, they’re not doing a lousy job of it because they don’t seem to be making any attempt whatsoever. They seem to think their job stops at telling us what Trump’s new ICE hires are doing and leaving the legality or illegality of it all for the courts and the protesters to sort out. Trump, who sees the rule of law as an impediment to his personal wealth acquisition, could care less, or so it seems.

The public is going to have to educate ourselves on immigration law. I started looking for information at the Brennan Center for Justice and found the following.

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law is a independent, nonpartisan law and policy organization that works to reform, revitalize, and defend our country’s systems of democracy and justice.

Check out this excerpt from the immigration law explainer at the Brennan Center for Justice website.

###

The Immigration Court System, Explained

Most immigrants facing deportation are entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge, but their legal rights differ from those in criminal cases.

Margy O’Herron

“Immigrants also have due process rights. Under the Fifth Amendment, “No person shall.. be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” More than a century ago, the Supreme Court concluded in the 1896 case of Wong Wing v. United States that “person” in the Fifth Amendment includes “all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality” and that “even aliens shall not be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The foundational principle that immigrants have Fifth Amendment due process rights has been reaffirmed many times, including in 1993, when Justice Antonin Scalia reiterated in Flores v. Reno that the Fifth Amendment entitles immigrants to due process of law in deportation proceedings.

A unanimous Supreme Court recently affirmed once more that immigrants in the country have a right to due process under the Fifth Amendment. The Court split on other issues in the case, but all nine justices agreed that even under the overbroad and controversial authority of the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime authority that the president has invoked to detain and remove certain Venezuelan nationals, detainees have the right to judicial review of questions of interpretation and constitutionality, as well as whether or not they fit within the category of people designated as alien enemies. All nine justices also agreed that, before the government removes them, immigrants detained under the Alien Enemies Act are entitled to notice within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek relief in a federal court with jurisdiction over the location in which they are detained. The Court did not, however, define what constitutes a “reasonable time,” and lower courts continue to grapple with that question.

The exact contours of immigrants’ due process rights in immigration proceedings have been extensively litigated over many decades in most if not all federal circuits. Issues include how much time an immigrant in removal proceedings must be given to find an attorney, the standard that attorneys must meet to provide effective representation, whether an immigration judge provided an immigrant a full and fair hearing, and the quality of language translation.

Beyond the Constitution, the statute requires DHS to notify immigrants of the reason it seeks to remove them and gives immigrants in removal proceedings the right to examine evidence against them, present evidence on their own behalf, and cross-examine the government’s witnesses. The immigration judge’s decision must be based only on the evidence introduced at the immigration hearing, and the government must keep a complete record of the testimony and evidence.”

more