Our fellow citizens

U.S. citizens entangled by government’s border suspicions

It’s hard, sometimes, to fully appreciate the principle of presumed innocence.

Those two words represent a foundation of the American judicial system and of a nation long willing to go above and beyond in the protection of individual liberty, with occasional failings. Generally, though, the United

States sets a very high bar when the government wants to take away someone’s freedom. Law enforcement can’t just throw a few allegations together and deprive an American of a chance for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Evidence must, beyond a reasonable doubt, overcome the presumption of innocence and create a compelling case of actual guilt.

Many Americans don’t realize it, or at least don’t think about it much, but those protections aren’t there to get murderers, robbers and rapists off the hook. Show us a criminal who gets out of a prison sentence due to a “technicality” and we’ll show you untold millions of Americans whose liberties were simultaneously protected from overzealous government action. There really are no such things as technicalities when it comes to the law.

Some will grouse: The deck is stacked against prosecutors or the cops, they’ll say. But U.S. jurisprudence has long been rooted in the notion that’s it’s better to let 10 guilty people go than it is to lock up a single innocent person.

Let’s turn our attention to the nation’s effort to deal with illegal immigration, that is, the flow of unauthorized people from foreign lands into the United States. And let’s be blunt: When people talk about illegal immigration, they mostly envision people with brown skin crossing the United States’ southern border. When’s the last time you’ve heard a rally cry for making America great again by blocking job-stealing Canadians or Norwegians from getting in?

The current administration has put a lot of its political eggs in the border wall campaign, pledging to stem a tide of illegal immigration. Let no one be misled: The United States has failed for years to control its border. Under Republican and Democratic administrations, the door has been propped open. If not accompanied by a welcome sign, at least U.S. policies came with a wink, a nudge and a blindfold.

But Donald Trump promised to get tough and, as a nation, the United States has every right to do it.

How the federal government goes about it, however, is a matter for serious debate. And the most recent news from the front — that is, the southern border — reflects an outrageously unAmerican way of tackling the problem,.

The Washington Post recently reported the U.S. government, in a program the State Department started under President Obama but intensified under President Trump, is incarcerating or denying re-entry to some U.S. citizens whose only apparent infraction was being born near the U.S. southern border. Not on the Mexico side of the border. On the U.S. side. In essence, our federal government is willing to deny full-fledged U.S. citizens entry into their own country on the possibility that they might be illegal.

This turns the concept of presume innocence on its head. And it turns the stomach, too, much like what this nation did to Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Years ago, midwives or doctors delivered some babies in Mexico but brought them across the border and obtained Texas birth certificates. What’s happening now? People who have spent their lives as U.S. citizens — including people who were undoubtedly born in the United States — are being flagged, denied passports or denied re-entry into their own nation because the federal government is suspicious about their origins. And get this: Our government then demands these folks find some way, other than a legally issued birth certificate from the states, to prove their citizenship. That includes obscure documents most U.S. citizens would struggle to find.

The Washington Post reported on one man, for example, whose official American birth certificate shows he was delivered by a midwife in Brownsville, Texas. Now, we remember the tourism slogan that Texas is like a whole other country, but in reality, it is indeed part of the U.S. and has been since 1845. If one is born there — whether it’s in Brownsville or Dallas — he’s a U.S. citizen.

The man served as in the U.S. Army, as a cadet in the Border Patrol and now works as a state prison guard. And yet, when he applied to renew his passport this year, the State Department said it didn’t believe he was a U.S. citizen. The federal government is accusing him and others, maybe thousands, of having fraudulent birth certificates, and it’s apparently time for a crackdown.

These Americans are caught up in our nation’s border war based on suspicion and our federal government then imposes a burden on them to prove their citizenship. That should offend every citizen in this nation.

Suspicion should never be good enough for the U.S. government to deny someone who has lived as a U.S. citizen all the rights and privileges to which a citizen is entitled.

In other words, our government better be absolutely sure, and it shouldn’t put anyone in a frightening state of citizenship limbo before they are sure.

This is far more important than just being one more criticism focused on the erratic behaviors of President Trump. This is a failure of the federal government to stand up for U.S. citizens, to do everything within its power to guard their best interests. American citizens rely on their government, for example, to stand up for them when something goes awry in a foreign land. But what happens when it’s their own government, within their homeland’s own borders, treating them as though they don’t belong.

Is this really how our federal government will solve the legitimate concerns about illegal immigration? Is it OK if a few American citizens get caught up in this campaign? Would it be OK if it were you, or your son or daughter?

An American citizen is an American citizen, whether he lives in Northwest Arkansas, St. Louis, Seattle or 300 yards north of the Rio Grande River. But apparently brown skin and a Latino surname, and the misfortune of birth near the southern U.S. border, is enough to turn the U.S. government against some of its own people.

This feels like the questioning of President Obama’s citizenship, which was a repugnant tactic based on nothing more than suspicion. Obama had mechanisms to fight such a claim, but some of the folks affected by this approach don’t.

All U.S. citizens should condemn this misguided program.