Habeas Corpus: What is it and Does Anyone Care?
It doesn’t really inspire much confidence in the Trump inner circle when the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, doesn’t even know what “Habeas Corpus” is, let alone how it directly applies to the legality of the admin’s random and illegal deportations of immigrants (many of whom have a legal right to be here).
White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, told reporters recently that the Trump administration was considering suspending habeas corpus. So… Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire quized Noem point blank: “Secretary Noem, what is habeas corpus?”
Noem answered: “Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country…”
Whoa! Noem, who has an undergrad degree in Political Science must’ve missed class that day. It’s actually the diametric opposite of the due process right established in the Constitution.
I’m no legal wiz myself, so I asked my friend, Tamra Mezera, attorney and former Judicial Law Clerk at State of Tennessee 21st Judicial District about habeas corpus. She told me, “It allows us to come before a judge to discover what crime we are charged with and the right to defend against when action is taken against us to infringe on our freedom or our property.”
In other words, you can’t just decide to jail or deport someone without their day in court, which is what the Trump administration has been doing for months now by detaining, deporting, and sending alleged criminals from other countries to El Salvador’s mega-prison.
Tamra said, “It’s in Article One of the Constitution. It was that important to the founding fathers. The Bill of Rights in the Amendments safeguard us further in the fifth and fourteenth amendments.”
Yes, it can be circumvented under enemy invasion. (Could this be the reason behind the president’s constant use of the word “invasion” to describe the people seeking asylum at our borders?) Anyway, it’s not war time or an enemy “invasion,” and as Tamra said, “SCOTUS isn’t buying the use of the Alien Enemies Act” that the president uses as his excuse to get rid of anyone he finds objectionable.
Could he someday determine you or me or someone you love qualified to be in that category?
“So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice.” (Isaiah 59:14-15)
