A former federal judge laid into the Supreme Court’st conservative majority on MS NOW on Tuesday morning for allowing the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, to run roughshod over the Constitution.
Former judge Nancy Gertner expanded on an opinion piece she wrote for The Atlantic, where she argued, “Much of what ICE is doing is not remotely constitutional [and] the Court decisions that laid the groundwork for the agency’s lawlessness no longer stand up to basic scrutiny,” and she claimed the court is failing in its duty to rein in the out-of-control agency headed by DHS Director Kristi Noem.
“Untold numbers of ICE agents have appeared on America’s streets in recent months, and many of them have committed acts of aggression with seeming impunity,” Gertner wrote in The Atlantic. “Many of these tactics are plainly illegal. The Constitution incontestably applies to federal immigration officers: The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and excessive force and requires a warrant to search a private home. The Fifth Amendment guarantees due process and bans self-incrimination. The Sixth Amendment establishes a person’s right to counsel. Why, then, are they getting away with not following the Constitution?”
The answer, she stated on “Morning Joe” is a Supreme Court that continues to turn a blind eye to Donald Trump’s administration trampling all over laws which she has suggested puts “far too much faith in ICE’s commitment to respecting people’s constitutional rights.”
Appearing on MS Now, she was asked by co-host Katty Kay, “So, Judge Gertner, given these two legal precedents that give ICE a lot of power, and given this Supreme Court and given this White House, It doesn’t sound like somebody who is caught up in ICE’s net in a way that is not legal, a citizen, for example, or a lawful permanent resident or somebody who has not committed a crime, it doesn’t sound like they have much recourse.”
‘They don’t have much recourse,” the judge shot back. “I mean, one of the things that the court said was that, of course, you know, you can file a complaint with ICE internally. That is ridiculous to me — fundamentally ridiculous.”
“There’s also another issue here, which is the way that Trump is effecting immigration arrests,” she elaborated. “We don’t even know where immigrants go, we don’t know where they are. And there’s a thing called expedited removal, which used to only be at the border. Now, the Trump administration sort of said it’s in the entire country. So people are not even in a place where they can claim rights even if they had it.”
“I’m just reminded of something that Kristi Noem says, well, you know, ICE officers are subject to, vulnerable to attacks and are in a dangerous profession. The notion that police who are regulated in this way are not attacked, are not subject to even more danger, is extraordinary.”
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