Sunday, May 11, 2025

The Deportees Are Us

“If due process is of no moment, what is stopping the Government from removing and refusing to return a lawful permanent resident or even a natural born citizen?” — U.S. Judge Stephanie Thacker, 4th District.

It may be of comfort to some that Trump’s mass deportations will not affect those of us who are citizens with our full rights to due process under the law. But as Politico reports in this weekend’s top story, “ Judges across the country continue to note that if courts don’t protect the rights of the least popular and most vulnerable, everyone is at risk.”

Authoritarian regimes always start their extralegal grad for power much like a predator stalking a herd of grazing wildlife — by picking off the weakest members in a society. Invariably, the tyranny begins with oppressive actions against the young, poor, minorities, immigrants — those least able to defend themselves.

But once the most vulnerable have been subdued or eliminated, the predator comes for the rest of us. So it is and will be with Trump. Today’s non-citizen ICE detainee tomorrow it could be you or me.

That is why all people of good conscience need to stand up against these illegal, immoral and racist deportations. The people caught up in Trump’s raids, whether they are actually guilty of any serious crime or not, have a right to their day in court.

We have to insist on that as a matter of principle, of course, but there also is the practical side of all this.

Today it is “them.” Tomorrow, those having to fear that next knock at the door will be us.

HEADLINES:

ADDITIONAL LINKS (Thanks, Leslie):

  • Stephen Miller Threatens to Suspend Habeas Corpus because He Got Caught Lying (EmptyWheel)

  • ‘Tone deaf’: US tech company responsible for global IT outage to cut jobs and use AI (Guardian)

  • Elizabeth Holmes’s Partner Has a New Blood-Testing Start-Up (NYT)

  • Ye song glorifying Hitler gets millions of views on X while other platforms struggle to remove it (NBC)

  • Trump Media Warns Of ‘Material Weakness’ In Financial Controls (Forbes)

  • Putin Proposes Direct Russia-Ukraine Talks in Istanbul Next Week (Moscow Times)

  • What’s the Cost to Society of Pollution? Trump Says Zero. (NYT)

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