Trump: Kidnapper in Chief
President Trump’s Administration has denied due process as required by the Fifth Amendment to the US Costitution. The inhumane treatment of refugees at the US Southern Boarder as directed by the President are the works of an authoritarian president who consistently sees himself as above the law. As American Citizens who deeply care about the values of our country we cannot ignore the president’s attacks on the values that we all hold dear.
There are a myriad of actions that President Trump (Kidnapper in Chief) has committed but no issue demonstrates the lack of a moral compass by the president and the Republican congress than what has and is taking place on the border of Mexico.
On the southwest border of the US we have been witness to refugees fearing for their lives coming from Central American countries into the United States and being denied due process as guaranteed in the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution.
In 2001, the US Supreme Court in Sadvydas vs. Davis stated: the Due Process Clause applies to all persons within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent.
Due Process is stated in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution. However the Trump administration felt that the US Constitution doesn’t apply to them. Their answer has been to take children as young as two years old from their parents and them put their parents in cages and transport their children all over the United States or back to their home countries.
Today, months after this criminal act, there are still hundreds of children who have not been united with their parents.
Recently United States District Judge Dana Saabraw in referencing these allegations stated: “These allegations sufficiently describe government conduct that arbitrarily tears at the sacred bond between parent and child.”
There is no other way of putting this but to state: the president of the United States has sanctioned the atrocity of having the US government by force separate children from their parents without knowing where or how they can reunite these families.
When the Constitution was written Madison and Jefferson envisioned a document that enshrined a government that had a system of checks and balances. They envisioned that a tyrannical president would be held in check by Congress.
In order to ensure this the founding fathers gave the Congress certain powers to oversee a president whose actions undermined the Constitution.
One would expect that when a president had his attorney general implement a policy which amounted to kidnapping of children from their parents that the Republican controlled congress would carry out their constitutional responsibility to provide oversight of the executive branch and to immediately hold hearings and demand to know why this happened and hold those responsible to account.
We would also expect that media organizations would conduct inquiries into the abuse and cover it extensively. We all know that Fox News (state TV) only gave lip service to what took place along the Southern Border. Congress completely failed to hold President Trump (Kidnapper in Chief ) to account.
Fortunately our Constitution does provide a means to hold the Republican Congress accountable by holding elections every two years
Republicans, Independents, and Democrats have a responsibility to hold the Republican controlled congress to account. Republicans in congress have repeatedly failed to uphold the oath they took to uphold the US Constitution.
The rule of law is paramount to the survival of any democracy. During these times Lewis Brandeis’s words are particularly relevant: “Our government…teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” [Chief Justice Louis D. Brandeis]
Kenneth Pottel, Fairhaven
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