Executive Order 13768: President Trump's Slippery Slope

By Walker Adams on March 3, 2017

President Trump Signing an Executive Order
Photo Credit: Shawn Thew, European Press Photo Agency

President Trump’s executive orders have consistently shown a penchant for violating the Fourteenth Amendment. Executive Order 13768 has brought an onslaught of legal criticism unseen since the Watergate Scandal. The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution forms the fundamental bedrock of the legal freedoms of the inhabitants of the United States of America; furthermore, it is the amendment that makes the Bill of Rights applicable to the state legislatures. Any encroachment on the Fourteenth Amendment must be taken as a serious intrusion into the most basic rights of all Americans.

The Fourteenth Amendment outlines that “No State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”[1] Fortunately, the Fourteenth Amendment’s constitutional protections cover all inhabitants of the U.S., even those who reside in the United States illegally. This is where President Trump’s executive actions blatantly flaunt the U.S. Constitution. Executive Order 13678 states that any migrants that “have been charged with any criminal offense” can be deported. Suddenly, and without logical reasoning, President Trump wants to deport any immigrant charged with an offense, regardless of that offense’s severity. This ignores both the Due Process and Equal Protections Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. This must be called out for the blatant constitutional violation that it is.

The local impacts of this executive order are much more far-reaching than anyone thought possible. Just this week a 19-year-old native of Honduras, who received a work permit under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, was arrested in San Antonio, TX for “possession of less than two ounces of marijuana.”[2] This crime is typically considered a misdemeanor and punishable by a fine; however, the young migrant was threatened with deportation and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for two days.

Fortunately, this migrant was released and his DACA protection was continued. Yet, thousands of other migrants don’t want to risk their chances and have stopped driving, going to church, visiting the grocery store, going to doctor’s appointments, or picking their kids up from school. Illegal migrants have now been driven even further into social isolation by the president’s unconstitutional orders [3].

At this point, you’re probably wondering “why should I care about the violation of the constitutional rights of migrants?” The ease with which Executive Order 13768 violates the constitutional rights of one group creates the slipperiest of slopes for the constitutional rights of all other groups. Once federal authorities have desensitized the American people to the violation of migrant rights, they could very easily come for your rights.

The violation of a single individual’s constitutional rights must be seen as an attack on the entire fundamental theory of liberty that our great republic was founded upon. It is of the utmost imperative to halt the continuance of unconstitutional executive actions and secure the rights of all the inhabitants of this great nation.

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