So many “adminstrative errors“
It’s the rapidity of our slide into autocracy that’s stultifying. But Trumpism was always going to come to this (NBC News):
A U.S.-born American citizen was being detained at the request of immigration authorities Thursday despite an advocate showing his U.S. birth certificate in court and a county judge finding no reason for him to be considered an “illegal alien” who illegally entered Florida.
Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez, 20, was arrested Thursday evening by Florida Highway Patrol and charged under a state immigration law that has been temporarily blocked since early this month. Details of Gomez-Lopez’s arrest and detention were first reported by the Florida Phoenix news site.
The county judge determined Gomez-Lopez’s birth certificate is authentic, but claimed no authority to interfere with an immigration case.
Nonetheless, he remains detained locally at ICE’s request, said Thomas Kennedy, a spokesperson at the Florida Immigrant Coalition who attended Thursday’s hearing.
You know, just another of those administrative errors for which the Trump 2.0 has a reputation. When they’re not writing due process and Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable search and seizure out of the Constitution.
NBC adds:
Lopez Gomez was in a vehicle with other passengers and was traveling to work from Georgia when they were stopped after entering Florida.
A sweeping immigration law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023 makes it a state crime for an undocumented immigrant over age 18 to enter the state illegally.
That is, Lopez-Gomez, born or naturalized in the United States, was minding his own business when he was stopped, arrested, and thrown in jail, very likely for not looking American enough in the eyes of the Florida Highway Patrol. He was released this morning after spending the night in jail.
Citing Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland’s visit last night with the kidnapped Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, Chris Geidner (a whole lotta Chrises this morning) writes that “Thursday was a day for seeing why standing up matters — and can make a difference.” A lot more of us are going to need to stand up.
Writing for a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Thursday, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee, called the Trump administration on the carpet for its misuse of power in the Abrego Garcia case:
It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.
This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.
Abrego Garcia is in the country illegally but has no criminal record, and was under a protective order against being deported to El Salvador. The Trump administration claims he is variously 1) a member of MS-13, 2) a terrorist, 3) a human trafficker, and 4) an abusive spouse. It’s loosed its right-wing influencers to flog all of it. They ignore the fact that, whatever the truth of the matter, Abrego Garcia had a constitutional right to have a court test those allegations before his kidnapping, deportation, and incarceration (at taxpayer expense) in what is essentially a Salvadoran concentration camp.
Wilkinson reflects on our mutual peril:
If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?∗ And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive’s obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” would lose its meaning. U.S. CONST. art. II, § 3; see also id. art. II, § 1, cl. 8.
The Executive’s obligation has already lost its meaning. Officials are already arresting and detaining American citizens. Trump 2.0 is already violating our Fourth Amendment rights. Trump has declared his intention to (illegally) revoke the birthright citizenship guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment to people born in this country. Maybe even to Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez. Maybe even to you.
I can think of a few people who work in the West Wing who deserve having their birthright citizenship revoked more, if that’s where the Trump dictatorship is headed.
Update: Fuck you, Donny.
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