Summary:
An appellate judge told prosecutors Monday that “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemy Act” than the Venezuelan nationals the Trump administration recently removed from the U.S. to a prison in El Salvador.
Judge Patricia Millett drew the stark comparison during a hearing at the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where lawyers representing the Trump administration worked to lift a lower court’s temporary ban on the deportation of immigrants under a proclamation President Donald Trump recently issued that invoked the Alien Enemies Act.
The centuries-old law has only been used four times in American history and gives the president broad powers to deport non-U.S. citizens from “enemy” nations, or those deemed to be committing an invasion or incursion against the U.S. The law is a powerful dragnet since it allows a targeted person to be deported without a single hearing before a judge or in immigration court.
“Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemy Act than what has happened here… they had hearing boards before people were removed,” Millett said. “Here, there’s nothing about hearing boards or regulations and nothing was adopted by agency officials who were administering this. People weren’t given notice [and] weren’t told where they were going.”
“We certainly dispute that analogy,” federal prosecutor Drew Ensign replied.
Trump’s proclamation on March 15 declared the Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua to be an “invading force.” What followed was the swift removal of at least 200 people from the U.S. whom the administration flagged as members of the gang. Justice Department lawyers conceded in court that the exact number of people the government has identified as members of the gang is unclear.
American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt, who is representing the plaintiffs, said “many, if not all” of those removed have no ties to Tren De Aragua. In some instances, tattoos on those removed have been misinterpreted by the government as symbols of gang membership.
It's because the USA is beholden to wealth. The Democrats and the Media are in the pockets of the same billionaires as the Republicans. Furthermore, your electoral system is archaic and not true democracy. First-past-the-post creates a two party system by design and when both of those parties have become corrupted then voting isn't going to solve anything.
Campaign Finance Reform is the issue from which ALL other issues flow.
The biggest problem in American politics is money. They have worked very hard for many years to strip back the laws that regulate campaign contributions, ultimately allowing the wealthy to be able to donate as much as they want, which gives them the power to cut quid pro quo deals that benefit them, at the expense of the American people, in exchange for huge campaign contributions.
At the same time that those regulations were being shredded, the number of billionaires boomed, so we have more people than ever to take advantage of this corrupt, money-driven system, exacerbating it.
We've even reached the point where candidates are owned by specific Sociopathic Oligarchs. MuskRat owns HitlerPig, Theil owns Vance. Now that we've established that the wealthy can LITERALLLY purchase candidates, and steer them any way they desire, we can expect every wealthy family and corporation to start buying elected officials and alternately threatening and rewarding them to force them to comply with their selfish wishes.
I used to support Ross Perot, but I have come to disagree with his notion of Kitchen Table Economics, but I still like his proposal for political campaigns. He suggested a 90 day political campaign season, paid for by the Federal Government. The short political season would mean far less money in campaigns, and absolutely no private campaign contributions of any kind would be allowed.
That would mean that to win, the only currency for a candidate to go after would be every citizen's single vote. They no longer have to convince Sociopathic Oligarchs to contribute to them, forcing them to cut ugly deals at the expense of American citizens, they only have to convince citizens to spend their single vote on them.
Then you would have elected officials who are beholden to their constituents and their votes, and not be beholden to wealthy people who keep them on their leash, threatening to spend their political contributions on their primary opponents if they dont comply with their Sociopathic Oligarch Leash-holder.
Again, Campaign Finance Reform is the issue from which ALL other issues flow.