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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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It is as fundamental as constitutional disputes get. Either legal immigrants enjoy the rights that the Constitution grants to "persons" (as opposed to "citizens of the United States") or they do not.

They absolutely do. Even illegal immigrants get those rights -- you can't go around subjecting them to cruel punishments!

because the President has the right to grab any non-citizen they want and ship them off to a foreign prison without meaningful judicial review.

I think there is going to be a compromise where there is some judicial review, that's what I wrote!

But those on the left have to understand that the process due here is not going to be some unlimited thing. It's going to be in line with what the courts ended up with after the Supreme Court laid out Boumediene, Padilla and Rasul and so forth.

Can the administration circumvent court processes (including habeas corpus) by flying detainees out of the country to a foreign prison before the judge has time to finalise an order?

Ultimately I think this is going to go in your favor. Detainees are going to have a probable cause hearing in which they can assert citizenship or other lawful status.

What is the procedure for judicial review of an executive policy which may be facially illegal and cannot or should not be litigated piecemeal by individual litigants with standing?

That's a normative judgment for which there is voluminous discussion. I don't necessarily disagree, but it's hardly an obvious claim.

They absolutely do. Even illegal immigrants get those rights -- you can't go around subjecting them to cruel punishments!

Given that Trump and Bukele are publicly boasting about the tough conditions in Salvadorean prisons (which would be dubiously legal in the US under current 8th amendment jurisprudence), Trump is unaplogetically doing just that by proxy.

I agree he shouldn't be. That is why I say this case is important - because Trump thinks that he has found a legal blackhole that nullifies the rights of foreigners living in the US, and there is a reasonable chance that he either wins on the merits when the case gets to SCOTUS or successfully ignores an adverse court ruling.

Munaf controls though.