Hillary: "Eliminate Due Process For Illegals Who Commit Crimes Here"

[DeSwiss]

Clinton Irks Immigrants' Advocates

The New York Sun
By JOSH GERSTEIN
January 28, 2008

Immigrant-rights advocates and some Latino leaders are voicing concern at Senator Clinton's campaign-trail rhetoric about swiftly deporting immigrants with a criminal past. A vow to give the boot to criminal aliens has become an almost daily part of the New York senator's presidential campaign spiel on overhauling the immigration system.

"Anybody who committed a crime in this country or in the country they came from has to be deported immediately, with no legal process. They are immediately gone," Mrs. Clinton told a town hall meeting in Anderson, S.C., Thursday. On Wednesday, she told a crowd in North Bergen, N.J., that such criminals "absolutely" need to be deported. A day earlier, she told a rally in Salinas, Calif., that aliens with criminal records "should be deported, no questions asked."

Mrs. Clinton does not raise the subject in every speech, but her tough talk on the issue dates back at least to the Iowa caucuses last month, where she told the mother of a woman killed by a foreigner in a car accident that illegal aliens who have committed crimes need to be sent home "immediately." "No legal process," the New York senator said at a forum in Tipton, Iowa, according to a political news outlet, the Politico. "You put them on a plane to wherever they came from."

http://www.nysun.com/article/70253">MORE

And in other news........

Immigration Officials Detaining, Deporting American Citizens

By Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thursday, January 24, 2008 email

FLORENCE, Ariz. — Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona.

On Thursday, Warziniack finally became a free man. Immigration officials released him after his family, who learned about his predicament from McClatchy, produced a birth certificate and after a U.S. senator demanded his release. "The immigration agents told me they never make mistakes," Warziniack said in an earlier phone interview from jail. "All I know is that somebody dropped the ball."

The story of how immigration officials decided that a small-town drifter with a Southern accent was an illegal Russian immigrant illustrates how the federal government mistakenly detains and sometimes deports American citizens. U.S. citizens who are mistakenly jailed by immigration authorities can get caught up in a nightmarish bureaucratic tangle in which they're simply not believed.

An unpublished study by the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization, in 2006 identified 125 people in immigration detention centers across the nation who immigration lawyers believed had valid U.S. citizenship claims.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/25392.html">MORE

- I think that illegal aliens who commit serious crimes in this country should be deported. But deported after having received due process of law. Because... well we like to call ourselves, "A Nation of Laws." Right? And also because as you can see in the above article -- here we had American citizen who was well on his way to being deported to Russia. And he even HAD access to due process of law. And in this case, if that other Amendment we have.... you know the one about having a free press -- if that one hadn't been there to inform the man's family of what was happening to him, he might be eating borscht right now.

But I'm sure there'll be no problems with eliminating due process altogether for the illegals. That way when they get around to eliminating due process for the rest of us, they'll have all the bugs worked out.....

[sandnsea]

1. This story cannot be verified

There is no nationally recognized news source that has this story. If you can find cooberation, please post.

[DeSwiss]

3. While I'm not obliged to verify sources since I'm not a reporter....

... this is what is said on futher in the article:

"In the public remarks reviewed by The New York Sun, Mrs. Clinton seemed to propose mandatory deportation for any crime. In several instances, she did not say explicitly whether she was referring to all foreigners in America or only to illegal aliens seeking to be legalized. However, she made the comments while outlining her position on the immigration overhaul which failed in Congress last year.

Mrs. Clinton's campaign said she was referring to language in that bill, sponsored by Senators Kennedy of Massachusetts and McCain of Arizona, which barred granting the new "Z" visa and eventually citizenship to anyone convicted of a felony, certain serious misdemeanors, or three of any type of misdemeanor. "The bill makes clear that once someone is ultimately determined to have committed a disqualifying crime, they are deportable," a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Blake Zeff, said. "At that point, there is no process though which they can petition to obtain legal status to stay in the country. And there are no exceptions — not even an extreme hardship exception.

Mrs. Clinton's leading rival for the nomination, Senator Obama of Illinois, does not appear to address the criminal alien issue regularly on the stump. However, he supported the immigration bill and cast the same votes as the former first lady on the crime-related amendments."

I would assume that if her campaign is now "clarifying" her statements, then she said them. I don't have a problem with deportation of persons who commit serious crimes. I DO have a problem when ANY politician (which would include Obama or anyone else) suggests that we should agree to the elimination or curtailment of due process of law. As we've seen over the past 7 1/2 years, once you start doing that, its hard to stop.......



(on edit: added 3rd paragraph that includes reference to Obama's votes for the now defunct immigration bill)

[sandnsea]

7. So you intentionally distorted her remarks

Knowing that they had been clarified. Is that what you're saying?

You may not have a legal obligation to verify what you're saying about politicians, but you ought to consider that you have a moral obligation to tell the truth as you know it.

[DeSwiss]

9. Huh?

Ahh... no. She said it. I didn't make up the article, I just posted it. The OP title reflects what she said and what the article was about. There's no distortion. As to the issue itself, it matters little to me whether Hillary or anyone else said it. Its not about Hillary per se, as much as its about the idea that Congress and/or the Executive acting as though they can legislate away our civil liberties. With impunity. The Patriot Act is an extreme version of this concept.

Inasmuch as Hillary vies for the Oval Office, I think the issue is pertinent. More important than issues concerning who is shaking hands. Or not. And since she said "no due process for illegals," then I oppose this. The reason being that of another basic civil liberty we have: "the presumption of innocence."

The INS represents the executive. The judicial is there to check and make sure that what they are doing is legal under our Constitution. And no matter how many laws Congress passes to restrict our liberties, it doesn't, and we can't presume that they will always do so constitutionally. Many laws they have passed previously have been invalidated for these same reasons.

Hillary's rhetoric here plays into a basic centrist position on this issue, whose purpose is to reinforce a perception of having sufficient "hawk creds." "Will kick-ass, and take names." And make war if she has to -- is the underlying message intended. But to accomplish this, it plays into a stereotype of the overall illegal immigration issue which focuses upon the issues of criminal behavior, and thus uses a broadbrush that ends up painting a whole race. Being an African-American, I can attest to having seen this movie before.

What is worse, this same centrist view since its emergence via her husband Bill and the creation of the DLC, has compromised in the nominations process, rather than use the threat of cloture as the Repukes have done so effectively. Thus allowing the judiciary to become slanted to the right, as the present seating on SCOTUS will attest.

Due process is the single most powerful right an individual has to defend themselves against an all-powerful state. A state which now allows illegal surveillance, kidnapping and torture. It is the most basic tenet in our civil life, and we can't allow government, nor any other institution to limit or restrict this civil right for the perceived "safety" supposedly garnered to the benefit of the "greater good."

As the other article that I posted below the one about Hillary shows, people and institutions make mistakes. A court of law exists to make sure those kinds of mistakes don't happen. Because without it, one could find oneself in a foreign country, for lack of being able to prove who one is. And at that point, one becomes a "nonperson."

IMHO

DeSwiss

"They who would give up an Essential Liberty for Temporary Security
deserve neither Liberty nor Security." ~ Benjamin Franklin

[EFerrari]

10. proud2BLib posted this story last week in GD, iirc.

It wasn't from this venue but it's the same story.

http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/SE/20080126/NEWS/801260325

And here is the Sun link:

http://www.nysun.com/article/70253

[maddiejoan]

2. Uhm

Then you agree with Clinton.

[Marie26]

4. We already do

This is nothing new.

[MercutioATC]

5. Damn. Something HRC and I agree on.

...and I was having such a good time disliking everything that came out of her mouth.

Seriously, I agree.

[Maribelle]

6. Hillary didn't say "anyone that has an arrest record" did she?

In order to determine if a person has committed a crime we check the "criminal record". This is a tremendously more extensive check, and deals with only crimes they have been found guilty of.

You don't rely at all on an arrest record, because many people are found innocent of all charges.

"Committed a crime" indicates that they have been found guilty under due proccess of the law.

[EFerrari]

11. Her words:

"Anybody who committed a crime in this country or in the country they came from has to be deported immediately, with no legal process. They are immediately gone," Mrs. Clinton told a town hall meeting in Anderson, S.C., Thursday. On Wednesday, she told a crowd in North Bergen, N.J., that such criminals "absolutely" need to be deported. A day earlier, she told a rally in Salinas, Calif., that aliens with criminal records "should be deported, no questions asked."

That's some due process she has going there.

[Maribelle]

12. Anybody who committed a crime (found guilty through due process)

will be deported immediately, with no legal process (no legal deportaion process - - no appeal to not get deported - - just a deportation)

The point being: if you're found guilty of a crime out you go.

[DeSwiss]

13. Now this way, I have no problem....

...assuming that the during the due process phase of a state criminal trial, it has in fact been verified that the guilty party isn't a citizen and is in the country illegally. In such cases, I think that the person should serve their time and be released only to the INS for deportation. Although considering past performance, I have my doubts about the INS being able to even coordinate this.

Where I have a problem is when the administrative process through the INS becomes the sole arbiter in making the determination of who is and who is not a citizen. As the second article I posted shows, when done this way, people who are actually citizens may be in jeopardy of being deported.

[EFerrari]

14. No, that's not the point. The point is, she's for denying due process.

How progressive of her!

[jasmine621]

8. On this issue, I agree 100%.

So do several Hispanics in my family.