ICE are the lawbreakers in this North Plymouth story, not Ms. Fitzpatrick. ICE is arresting people, often without warrants, never with due process or habeas corpus, without notification of family or attorneys as to their whereabouts, often placing them in overcrowded, unsafe detention centers, sometimes out of the country, and most with no criminal charges or records.
All unconstitutionally, and in violation of other law if they are asylum seekers. Trump, himself, let in 3 million during his first term, 350,000 from Venezuela, alone, after overriding national security advisor John Bolton to impose devastating sanctions on that country, knowing it would lead to a mass exodus of refugees. Then Trump awarded them temporary protective status and let them apply for asylum. In Trump 2.0, he revoked their TPS, fired scores of immigration judges to further backlog the asylum system, branded them “illegals,” and is now placing as many as possible in the gulag of private torture chambers from El Salvador to Sudan.
Most are working, paying an average of $8,800 annually in federal, state, and local taxes, and ineligible for federal benefits. Every economist recently attributed our best-in-the world rebound from the Covid recession to the productivity gained from our immigrant labor infusion.
Here, in my new digs in northern New Hampshire, the only state in New England willfully assisting these fascists, some of us in the legal community have formed a group called “Icebreakers.” We have done the legal research and are sounding the warning that state and local officials and municipalities are not immune from a federal civil rights claim under chapter 24, section 1983. A person deprived of due process and habeas corpus in violation of the U.S. Constitution has up to three years after they leave prison to sue for damages.
We don’t take people off the street anonymously and whisk them away without due process and identification in our democracy. Some in Plymouth who don’t believe that are in need of a constitutional refresher. Law enforcement in the USA wear badges and are required to identify themselves. Fitzgerald was right to inquire.
Like the place the encounter occurred, not far from Jesse’s Boat Yard, where Italian immigrant Bartolomeo Venzetti was arrested a hundred years ago and railroaded into the electric chair, we have not come far enough in this country toward rendering justice according to the Constitution we love to boast about.
“First they came for the immigrants . . .”
– Theodore Bosen