Certain Unalienable Rights? Not in Trump’s America.. Or Obama’s
Amina Spahic, NLC Tampa Bay
On Tuesday, February 27, the Supreme Court ruled that immigrants do not have the right to a bond hearing even after years of being detained. Yes…the Supreme Court. Yes…years.
The ruling came about because of a class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Alejandro Rodriguez, a legal permanent resident who was convicted for joyriding as a teenager. Later on, at the age of 24, he was charged with possession of a controlled substance. And then he sat in prison for over three years.
In those years, Alejandro did not appear in front of a judge and he was facing deportation when the ACLU signed on to represent him.
At first, the district court denied class action status, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed this decision and Alejandro and the ACLU won. His deportation order was cancelled and the court of appeals ruled that immigrants and asylum seekers can’t be detained indefinitely. The court also ruled that such detainees have a right to a bond hearing every six months. For someone to be detained, the government would have to show the immigrant or asylum seeker poses a danger or would become a flight risk if set free.
In 2015, the Obama administration actually tried to overturn this ruling on the grounds that the law allows the government to detain “criminal and terrorist aliens and “aliens seeking admission to the United States.” Trump’s administration simply continued the fight and now immigrants and asylum seekers could be detained indefinitely with their rights stripped because of an inherent assumption that they’re dangerous.
It was Bill Clinton who signed a law in 1996 which made detention mandatory for immigrants who commit any crime. In 2014, instead of repealing the 1996 law, the Obama administration doubled down and claimed that immigrants can file a petition for habeas corpus — meaning they would have to hire a lawyer and report an unlawful detention or imprisonment. This is an expensive, time consuming, and complicated process which an immigrant likely can not afford. It is not a solution.
I would know. I am one.
I came to America with my family at just 9 years old with no English background and my parents definitely had no knowledge of how the US court system operates. That is the case with an overwhelming majority of immigrants who enter the US. We are human too and no person entering the US should be completely stripped of their constitutional rights to potentially sit in jail for years. It isn’t just constitutional rights being taken away but years of a future that was supposed to be better in the land of opportunity.
The American Bar Association and the American Jail Association are only some of the organizations that have recommended the use of alternative programs to detention to save taxpayers money and to refrain from using detention based on a criminal detention model . The federal government spends $5 million on a daily basis on detention and ICE has a budget of $2 billion dollars for just that purpose.
While the economics of the issue are staggering and only rising, who will speak on how inhumane it is to have a policy of leaving a human being in jail with no timeline or clear procedure on when they may be able to defend their case?
Justice Stephen Breyer, who was one of three justices to vote against the ruling, said, “No one can claim, nor since the time of slavery has anyone to my knowledge successfully claimed, that persons held within the United States are totally without constitutional protection.”
We need to make sure no one can claim that now.
Amina Spahic is a community organizer based in Tampa, Florida. Amina was born into the political climate of the Bosnian War in 1992. After resettling to Austria, she and her family found Tampa to call home in 2001. Since then, she has advocated passionately for equal opportunities and rights for minorities, racial equality and diversity. Amina has served as the Diplomacy Intern for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara, Turkey where she worked with a think tank of peers and presented an analysis about the future of Turkish foreign policy. She is the recipient of the USF Director’s Award, History of Achievement Award and the Business Ethics Initiative Scholarship and a 2016 Nominee for the El-Hibri Foundation Young Leader Peace Award. Currently, she works closely with Emgage USA, a non-profit working to empower Muslim Americans in the political process, and sits on the board of the New Leaders Council Tampa Bay and Organize Florida where she works to advance progressive policies and train the future leaders of Florida.
