Summary
A third federal judge, Joseph N. Laplante, blocked Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.
His ruling follows similar decisions from judges in Seattle and Maryland.
The lawsuits, led by the ACLU, argue Trump’s order violates the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to nearly all born on U.S. soil.
The Trump administration contends such children are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. Legal battles continue, with appeals underway and further rulings expected in other courts.
But wouldn’t that also work the other way around? If so, any white supremacist or government agency could commit any atrocity and not get convicted, because the victim wasn’t protected by any laws.
The sliver of hope there is that the law isn’t usually written in terms of the one being acted on but in terms of the one doing the action. Murder is illegal regardless of the status of the victim. It doesn’t say murder is the killing of a citizen, but rather a person regardless of nationality or citizenship status. Where things get a bit rockier though is in regards to constitutional protections. Things like due process it could be argued don’t apply to non-citizens.
That is a good point. So, in this case, the non-citizen would be like a tourist. They have some rights too, don’t they?
Strictly speaking no, they don’t actually have constitutional protections, it’s just that it’s simpler for our legal system to treat everyone uniformly (also I’m not sure it’s ever actually come up before except in the highly specialized circumstances of Guantanamo Bay). Additionally tourists have their government backing them so it wouldn’t be worth the international incident that something like denying them due process would cause. In general though with a tourist causing problems it’s often easier for the government to just cancel their visa and deport them back to their home country then ban them from returning, rather than dealing with the headache of trying to prosecute a foreign national.
Whether the victim was subject to our laws or not, the perpetrator is still committing a crime in this scenario. It isn’t legal to murder tourists for example. Animals aren’t US citizens but it’s still illegal to torture or molest them.
Ding ding ding! You got it!