Donald Trump apparently forgot that his wife entered the country under our current immigration system. While we don't know if she ever actually obtained legal residency after her visa expired, since she never held that press conference promised years ago, what we do know is that she would not have been permitted to enter the country without the laws currently on the books.
So when the orange shitgibbon refers to our immigration laws as "a joke" and lies about them in order to suggest we should simply ban immigration and asylum altogether, he is essentially saying that our First Immigrant First Lady should have been turned back before she set foot on our soil forever and ever amen.
"We have bad laws," he groused. "We have the worst immigration laws in the history of the world. It's a joke."
Well, I guess so if Melania was allowed to stay after her visa expired instead of being deported the way he wants to do to everyone else.
Congress has appropriated some money for immigration judges who hear asylum claims and make a determination about whether those people requesting it should be allowed to remain in the country. The amount they've appropriated would pay for about 750 judges, according to reports.
But in Trump's demented mind, he would "have to choose 5,000 judges!" He then rants about how corrupt that would be and how anybody on the street could be an immigration judge, yada yada, all of which was a lie intended to spark attention in his base while propagandizing the general population. It was like something right out of Alex Jones' Infowars.
Where did the shitgibbon get that from? Lou Dobbs? Sean Hannity? Was it a topic they talked about at night whilst whispering to one another on the phone before night-nights?
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, by the way, was asked about that 5,000 judge claim, and couldn't find any justification for that number. In typical Sarah Huckabee Sanders fashion, she promised to get back to reporters and hasn't. Of course she hasn't.
More importantly, Trump is arguing for the United States Constitution to simply be tossed out the window in order to serve his xenophobic fever dreams, which is also part and parcel of Donald Trump's authoritarian aspirations.
Trump has called on Congress to narrow the scope of these humanitarian-relief laws to close what he describes as “loopholes,” but now he’s saying the United States should stop having judges evaluate immigration cases altogether. Undocumented immigrants should be turned away immediately, Trump says.
As a legal question, experts say Trump’s proposition is unsound. The Constitution grants due-process rights not only to U.S. citizens but to every “person” in the United States. The Supreme Court has said this covers undocumented immigrants.
“Whatever his status under the immigration laws, an alien is surely a ‘person’ in any ordinary sense of that term,” the court said in Plyler v. Doe, a 1982 case about school funding for undocumented children. “Aliens, even aliens whose presence in this country is unlawful, have long been recognized as ‘persons’ guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.”
As you keep his venomous spew in mind, read this Twitter thread from a survivor of the Marcos regime in the Philippines and see where we fall in the continuum of dictatorship.
