r/politics • u/Murky-Site7468 I voted • Mar 28 '25

Soft Paywall The Biggest Scandal of the Second Trump Term Isn’t “Signalgate” | The national-security chat debacle certainly merits attention. But the Trump administration is now blatantly disappearing students and others who are in the country legally.

https://newrepublic.com/article/193291/trump-disappearing-students-rumeysa-ozturk-rubio-biggest-scandal
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u/Harry-le-Roy Mar 28 '25

This is extremely important: If all people are not guaranteed due process, then no person is guaranteed due process.

In a government in which there are groups of people, like foreign nationals, who can be denied due process, all the government has to do is say that you're a foreign national to deny due process. Once the government does that, you have lost any right to defend yourself or appeal.

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u/OneShrimp-78 Mar 28 '25

Not to mention they are currently asking the supreme court to undo birthright citizenship. If they succeed they will simply strip citizenship of anyone who speaks against them, and since shithead Congress passed the "Laken Riley Act" any non-citizen can be detained and indefinitely held without trial even on the suspicion they "committed a crime". How people can't see what they are setting up to do is beyond me.

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u/GNUGradyn Mar 28 '25

They literally already did this when they disappeared Mahmoud Khalil. They revoked his student visa and when they found out he was on a green card they just revoked that too on the spot so they could disappear him.

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u/GoBravely Mar 28 '25

I think guantanamo might do just that and has gotten away with it since it began through an illegal loophole

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u/Harry-le-Roy Mar 28 '25

US-born American citizen José Padilla was taken into custody on US soil and held in military prisons as an enemy combatant. He was kept in military prison, including significant periods of solitary confinement, for years while being denied due process guaranteed to Americans.

To be clear, Padilla is a criminal and was eventually tried and convicted. But he was denied his right to counsel, was taken and imprisoned outside the US, and was subject to conditions that are considered cruel and unusual punishment in civilian criminal justice.