Garrett Epps: The Fragility of Immigrants’ Constitutional Protections

The nation is focused on the upcoming DACA argument on November 12 in the U.S. Supreme Court.  That same day, the Court also will hear argument in Hernandez v. Mesa, which involves the right of a family to recover damages for a constitutional violation (the killing of their son) by U.S. border officers in a cross-border shooting.  Law professor Garrett Epps in the Atlantic (“The Fragility of Immigrants’ Constitutional Protections”) carefully looks at that case and other recent ones that implicate the constitutional protections for noncitizens on (and off) U.S. soil.  Besides Mesa v. Hernandez,  he elegantly reviews the issues in “Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, which has not yet been scheduled for argument. The case tests a speedy deportation system called `expedited removal,’ created by Congress in 1996, that gives immigrants few of the procedural guarantees of regular deportation proceedings.”

KJ