Jaywalking is a crime. Crossing the border without permission is not.
Next time Trump's Dragoons goons show up for a “wellness check” at your local elementary school, ask them how they felt about masks during Covid.
If you break into a liquor store and steal a bottle of Jack, the Constitution shows up like a fairy godmother.
You get a lawyer.
You get a jury.
You get a trial.
Now take a ten-year-old girl who crosses the border with her aunt to escape a cartel that just killed her father.
What does she get? Or, stated differently, what doesn’t she get?
No lawyer.
No jury.
If she miraculously has the ability to remain silent, she does not have that right.
And, the only way she gets Miranda, is if she’s into country music.
Did I mention no trial? Trials are for courts. What she receives is an administrative hearing. The fake judge works for the President’s executive branch. Normally I would just say “executive branch.” But, this is definitely “the President’s executive branch”, which is a conversation for another day.
The short answer is she will be gone by lunch.
When I spent 700 days in five federal prisons in four states in the early 90s, I typically ended up running the law library. I helped a lot of non-citizens navigate situations with the Bureau of Prisons, divorce, child custody, restitution, things like that. Unlike the small handful of my fellow citizen prisoners who fought their case, the non-citizens were not trying to get out.
I am thinking of a fellow prisoner named, Kam, who I worked with in the furniture factory, where we actually manufactured the actual furniture our actual judges sat on when they banished us.
Kam was from Iran. He was a part time maître d' in Baltimore, and a full time coke dealer. As Kam finished his five years, the Feds filed a detainer, thereby preventing his release. Kam was transferred to a detention facility in Louisiana where people sat for undetermined amounts of time (sometimes years) before their hearing. Kam was scared to death of being returned to Iran as a felon, because apparently Iran treats its felons even worse than we do in these here United States.
I recall at least three instances, where in the run-up to their release, non-citizen prisoners would knowingly commit an additional felony (like whacking a fellow prisoner on the head with a folding metal chair) all for the privilege of remaining within the horrendous Federal prison system, rather than face detention in Louisiana and deportation to some theocracy.
Unlike our metaphorical burglar who commits a state crime, whacking a guy with a chair while in federal custody is a federal crime. But, the recipe for removing them from polite society remains the same.
They get to see the evidence against them.
The migrant child? No. The judge doesn’t even speak her language? The “evidence?”
“She was wearing sandals.”
The burglar’s burden of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt. At an immigration hearing it is sufficient for a police officer to tell ICE who tells the lawyer for the DOJ that “we heard she’s from Honduras.”
Nearly 80 million of your fellow citizens have a criminal record. Nearly 20 million are felons, meaning they were convicted of a crime that can result in more than a year in prison.
All of this is to say, next time ICE shows up at your local elementary school for a “wellness check”, ask them how they felt about masks during Covid.
Noem's Takedown Of Alex Padilla: Trump's Goons Assault Your Right To Representation In The Legislature
“What do you think the chilling effect is on every other one of your representatives? You vote. We spend all this money, we spend all this headspace deciding who we're going to vote for, who's going to be in Congress, who's going to be in the Senate, right? Who's going to represent us? Well, how are these people going to, how is anybody going to represe…