… to the United States Constitution was ratified on this date in 1868. The first section of the amendment reads:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
One thing I love about both this passage and the whole Bill of Rights is that they talk about “persons” and not “citizens.”
This section details how one becomes a citizen, and that the process is uniform for all states, but it also details a list of protections that apply euqally to all persons within the jurisdiction of the document, whether they be citizens, or imigrants — legal or illegal.
On Constitutional grounds, what we see the INS doing daily including imprisonment, interrogation, and summary deportation is clearly illegal (besides being unjust).
It was a dark day, years ago, when some court decided that undocumented aliens were nonpersons.
Most countries in the world, including the US, REQUIRE documentation from persons wishing to enter. This is usually in the form of a passport sometimes with an explicit visa allowing entry. These laws apply to all persons trying to enter.
So deportation of people who entered illegally may be unjust, but it is certainly legal and has nothing to do with declarations of non-personhood.