Our Rights

For John, BLUF:  Rigid bureaucrats seems redundant.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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I started at the Instapundit blog, here, which talked about someone who thought he was an American being deported as a criminal alien.  Apparently, per Professor Glenn Reynolds, President Obama is well ahead of President George W Bush in terms of deporting aliens.  At this particular blog post Professor Reynolds touched on the case of an Amercan Army Veteran who missed the clues and got the boot through a Kafkaesque process that should worry every American.

From the Instapundit blog post I linked over to this item at BuzzFeed, from which I quote below.

After seven weeks, a van brought Suess to the Department of Homeland Security office in downtown St. Louis. He seated himself in a cube of a room, law books spread before him on a table. Mounted high on the opposite wall was a video monitor, and on it floated the gray-haired Honorable John A. Duck, beamed in from the immigration court in Oakdale, La.

“What am I doing here?” Suess asked.

“I do not have to answer your questions,” Duck replied. “That’s why you need an attorney.”

“I can’t afford an attorney,” Suess said. “I should be able to get one from the court.”

“You are a criminal alien. You are not an American citizen, and you don’t have the rights of a citizen. The United States doesn’t have to provide you with an attorney.”

“I am an American citizen,” Suess said.

Mr Suess wasn't an American citizen, but what if he was?  What we have is the Administrative Judge, Mr Duck, asserting Mr Suess isn't a US Citizen, against Mr Suess' own understanding, wrong as that understanding might be.  Where is a legal process your average American would recognize as due process?  The Administrative Judge, Mr Duck, seems like a pretty cold fish—a man's life is twisted off its footing in less than two minutes and no questions are answered.

It reminds me of this quote from Lord Acton:

The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.

Mr William Suess was a minority in our nation.

I am not suggesting Mr Suess should be brought back to the US, or granted US Citizenship, but I am flat out declaring this is shabby treatment of someone who was living inside our borders.  This is the kind of Federal over-reach that we are seeing in many areas, against US Citizens as well as resident aliens (and illegal aliens, who should also be given due process).  If you are on US territory you should get all the benefits of our Constitution and our protected rights. Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff