“No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” — Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
The constitutional conservatives who lead Utah’s political class are strangely silent about the horrible abuse of basic constitutional rights that the Trump administration is perpetrating.
Utah’s members of Congress, its state officials, its legal scholars and law school professors, should be raising the roof to object to the way agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been snatching people off the street and deporting them, some to prisons in foreign nations, some back to nations they have no real connection with, without having to establish in court that those involved are the criminals or other threats the government claims they are.
(At least, we think these are ICE agents, as some of them are not uniformed or otherwise identified.)
The White House and right-wing media are claiming that people in the United States without authorization, or who are suspected of committing crimes or being members of violent gangs, are not entitled to the constitutional guarantee of due process. That the government is not obligated to appear in court and support, not just casually allege, those charges.
This is false. The Constitution’s guarantees of basic rights, including the right to due process, repeatedly and pointedly protect “persons.” Not citizens, legal residents, refugees or any other privileged class. Just, plain and simple, persons.
The persons who have been seized, or have had their student visas canceled, have been described as gang members on no evidence beyond that they have tattoos. Some who speak up for Palestinian rights have been wrongfully accused of being Hamas terrorists when they are doing no more than exercising the universal right of free speech and protest. Freedoms we preach about to other nations.
If the government can claim anyone is not entitled to due process, it can claim no one is entitled to due process. Law-abiding citizens, such as you, are just as vulnerable to being spirited away if the government isn’t obligated to prove that you are who they say you are.
Utah Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis, Reps. Celeste Maloy, Burgess Owens, Blake Moore and Mike Kennedy should be on record objecting to these practices. Before it starts happening in our state.
Editorials represent the opinions of The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board, which operates independently from the newsroom.
