Donald Trump’s child concentration camps take an even uglier turn
Did you know that Trump may be jailing US citizens in Baby Concentration Camps without due process? Since the Trump misadministration started separating families at the border, thousands of children have been jailed including babes in arms. Now Sessions is illegally trying to deport putative US citizens. It has recently been reported that children as young as three years old are representing themselves in deportation/asylum hearings. These children are US citizens!
8 USC Section 1401 (f) provides:
The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
(f) a person of unknown parentage found in the United States while under the age of five years, until shown, prior to his attaining the age of twenty-one years, not to have been born in the United States;
These children are in these hearings because the US has no idea who or where their parents are. Accordingly, these children are “persons of unknown parentage” who were “found in the United States while under the age of five years”. This means that the burden is on the government to prove that the child was not born in the United States, not for the child to explain why she or he is entitled to asylum.
The US cannot show that these children were not born in the US. At best, the government can document that at the time the child was taken into custody, the child was accompanied by a foreign national. The government has no evidence as to where the child was born. Accordingly, by statute, that child is now a US citizen.
Until such time as the government can produce evidence that these children were not born in the United States, these US citizens are being denied their due process rights. These children need access to legal counsel and the appointment of guardians ad litem to protect their interests. Demand that Sessions stop trying to deport US citizens without due process of law. Bruce C. Cohen is the author of the Missouri Defendant’s Procedural Warfare Manual
Bruce C. Cohen is an attorney and the author of Missouri Defendant’s Procedural Warfare Manual. He also writes fiction as Charlie Kenmore and Ken Charles.