President Donald Trump’s horrendous policy of separating children from their families at the border has faced a week of intense criticism and outrage from everyone with a minimum of sense of judgment and humanity. Given this, the president was forced to reverse for the first time. Now, with his pride wounded, Trump lashed out against immigrants and proposed a violation of the Constitution.
The unanimous rejection of Trump’s soulless policies left him without political support. The only people who last week dedicated themselves to defending the cruel separation of families at the border were a tiny group of heartless haters. For these people, the historical principles on which the United States was built have been shoved to the background based on the whims of its supreme leader. Trump had no choice but to swallow his pride and back down.
In order to reclaim the platform of his cult of personality, Trump wanted to satisfy ultraconservative groups, who only understand the language of intolerance. So, he repeated the old refrain that immigrants are “invading” the United States.
“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came,” Trump wrote on Twitter on June 24.
“Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Most children come without parents (...) Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years!” he added.
This shameful display of ignorance by the president deserves some analysis, the most important being the rejection of the Constitution with his suggestion that due process be ignored.
In the Constitution, there is only one mandate that is repeated in two amendments. This mandate is due process, that is, a person’s right to a fair trial regardless of the circumstances.
The Fifth Amendment tells the federal government that no one shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Additionally, the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, uses the same words, called the due process clause. It describes the legal obligation of all states to ensure that all levels of government operate within the law and provide fair procedures.
It is evident that Trump has not read the Constitution.
The president does not limit himself to clearly showing his lack of preparation. He also wants to make naïve people think that the families that flee from misery and violence in Central America and arrive in the United States with the hope of asking for asylum have an “express ticket” to citizenship, to the detriment of other immigrants who must wait “in line” for years. Nothing is further from reality.
The asylum process is extremely complex, lengthy, and exhausting. If a family seeks this resource, it is because they are truly desperate. It is clear that Trump has no idea how the immigration system works—although this is a system which, sadly, is under his command.
We believe in the importance of protecting the border and the need to implement humane laws in pursuit of the ideals on which the United States was founded. In the same way, we believe that it is an awful shame to see a president, who was elected to defend the Constitution, dedicated to trampling on it instead.