© Fox News screenshotJudge Andrew Napolitano
Last weekend, President Donald Trump argued that those foreigners who enter the United States unlawfully should simply be taken to the border, escorted across it and let go. According to the president, this would save precious government resources, avoid the business of separating children from their parents and free up the Border Patrol and other federal assets to do their jobs.
He is undoubtedly correct on the beneficial consequences to the government of forced deportation without due process. Yet
deportation without a trial is profoundly unconstitutional.Here is the back story.
The nation has been torn apart by the images of immigrant children -- some are babies -- being forcibly separated from their parents by U.S. immigration authorities, who were getting orders from the Trump administration, which was misreading federal law so as to require the separation.
The government has essentially taken the position that those physically present in the U.S. illegally have few constitutional rights and thus family members who arrive together can be separated, no matter the psychological or physical consequences. This forced separation is
not novel to the Trump administration, but its massive scale in the present toxic national political environment has painfully brought it to our collective conscience.
Comment: Border Patrol Agent: The best way to end to the humanitarian crisis on our southern border is Trump's wall