Human rights are a touchy subject at times. For the left, the idea of rights seems kind of nebulous and very conditional. Those of us on the right see our rights as more absolute. For the left, "rights" too often take the form of guarantees to gain something at someone else's expense, such as when they go shouting about "healthcare is a human right" or "housing is a human right." Well, something isn't a right if one's exercise of that right requires someone else to surrender a portion of their property (in the form of taxes) to pay for it. Those of us on the right tend to (correctly) see rights as things our government is prohibited from interfering with - such as certain amendments that include the words "Congress shall make no law" or "...shall not be infringed."
Then, there are the rights of accused criminals. Any American citizen accused of a crime has certain rights: The right to confront their accuser, the right to legal representation, and the right to a speedy trial by a jury of their peers, among others.
But what about captured illegal alien gang members? This has been a hot topic lately, what with President Trump's actions to deport a large number of Tren de Aragua and MS-13 goblins, and my friend and colleague Streiff has done some excellent coverage of this:
See Related: DC Judge Who Tried to Stop Deportations Gets a Harsh Message From El Salvador's President
President Trump's efforts to get these people out of our country have been handed a roadblock by a federal judge; as Streiff writes:
President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 Saturday in response to the proliferation of Tren de Aragua (TdA), a Venezuelan-based designated Foreign Terrorist Organization allowed to take root in the US by Joe Biden; see It's ON - President Trump Invokes Alien Enemies Act, Targets Notorious South American Gang – RedState. Within hours, some TdA members were on US aircraft heading some other place. While the J6 defendants had to beg for help or rely on public defenders who may not have had much sympathy for them, somehow, the airborne terrorists, like Hamas provocateur Mahmoud Khalil, were able to come up with high-powered and very expensive legal help on very short notice to keep them from being speedily deported.
The situation reached a head overnight with a federal judge who seemed to think he was the head of his own branch of government ordering the Trump administration to turn the flights around and bring them back to the US; see Activist Nation: Judge Orders Plane Carrying Gangsters Kicked Out by Trump to Turn Around – RedState.
The legal wrangling around all this will no doubt be sorted, one way or another, in the coming days and weeks. While predictions are hard to make, especially about the future, I'm inclined to believe that the administration will prevail and the repatriation flights will continue. Is there an element of wishful thinking in that? Perhaps.
The left, no doubt, will continue shouting about the human rights of murderous goblins who are in the country illegally, and that raises the question: What human rights do these criminals and gang members have?
We should note that there are no reports of the goblins being treated cruelly. While in custody, they are given food and water, they are not exposed to the elements, they are protected against each other. Many of them, especially the members of MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, have shown no such consideration to their victims, but we are better people than they. But President Trump has no notion of putting them into the American legal system; he wants them gone, and the American people would seem to agree since the president ran on this issue and won his election handily.
The upshot of this is that the administration's actions here are, from the rights standpoint, perfectly appropriate. These are predatory criminals who are in our country illegally and who are preying on our citizenry. We have no moral obligation to treat them as though they were citizens; they are, to use a familiar argument, not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Rounding them up, detaining, and repatriating them is a perfectly acceptable action, following which they are subject to the legal processes in whatever country they came from.
Sending Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador may raise other arguments. These gang members are not being repatriated in that they are not being sent back to their home country. They have been deported and will be held according to an evident agreement the United States has made with El Salvador. Thus, President Trump's invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act allows him actions that he would not otherwise be able to take - such as sending known gang members and criminals to be housed in a prison in El Salvador or to Gitmo. But there may indeed be a stumbling block that is - activist judges or no - a problem. That Act states in part:
That whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government, and the President of the United States shall make a public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being makes of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies.
While I'm not an attorney, it seems much will hang on the interpretation of "foreign nation or government."
The legal aspects of this, as noted, will be fought out, and there is no shortage of activist judges who will attempt to hamstring the administration's actions. But in the meantime, more goblins will be rounded up and detained, and in the meantime, no matter where they are housed until all this is sorted out, the American people are safer with them off the streets. The official stance is that these gang members are foreign invaders; the Trump administration is treating them accordingly, and while the legal aspects remain to be hashed out, the moral aspects would seem to be well satisfied. The administration has made the liberty and property of the citizens of the United States the priority, and that is, for once, precisely what government is intended to do.
