Caffeinated Politics

I use this blog post tonight to present a short and profoundly powerful court ruling handed down on Saturday. My best friend sent this to me this afternoon, and upon first reading it, I had tears in my eyes. For all the right reasons. What follows is something you can read quickly, but I suspect you will slow down and take in the words. (This is your civics class in high school, come back to life. It is the stuff I try to write in many of my posts over the recent months.)

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery said in a scathing court order that the Trump administration must release Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrián Alexander Conejo Arias, by Tuesday.

The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.

Apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old ThomasJefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:

1. “He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People.”

2. “He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.”

3. “For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.”

4. “He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures.“

“We the people” are hearing echos of that history.

And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized.

Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.

Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration’s detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R. The Great Writ and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment.

Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.

Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation. But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.

Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: “Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?” “A republic, if you can keep it.”

With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike,

It is so ORDERED.

NBC News reported the following about the dastardly actions taken by ICE, which created this traumatic time for a five-year-old.

Luis Conejo, Liam’s uncle and brother to Liam’s father, said in a video message sent to Noticias Telemundo that he feels “great joy knowing they can soon go home” and that Liam will be reunited with his mother.

“We are not close [physically], but well, that will soon come. When they are released, it will be a joy to be reunited,” he added.

Liam and his father were confronted by immigration authorities outside of their home as they were returning from the child’s preschool, according to Zena Stenvik, the superintendent of Columbia Heights Public Schools.

A school board member who witnessed the father’s arrest said that she heard an adult inside the home pleading with agents to leave the child.

The boy’s mother, Erika Ramos, said she “witnessed the scene from the window and couldn’t do anything. Adrián begged me repeatedly not to go outside because he was afraid they would arrest me too.”

She said that when immigration authorities noticed her at the window, they took Liam out of their vehicle and brought him to the front door.

“They used my boy as bait,” Erika Ramos said. “Even so, my husband desperately insisted that I not go out, especially because we have another child and I am pregnant.”