Without the rule of law, the law becomes subject to the ruler
Is anyone's U.S. citizenship safe?
When I speak to audiences about modern-day human trafficking, I have to find ways to help a foreign concept hit closer to home. So I’ll say:
While we may not be actively cracking a whip over the back of a slave in a cotton field in Mississippi today, this does not mean we aren't still relying on the slave labor to supply our clothing demand.
Relocating forced labor does not make us innocent of its abuse.
It just makes it easier to ignore.
In the same way, we are watching migrant communities in the United States brace for internment just like Japanese Americans experienced on U.S. soil during WWII.
We have seen the evidence of this horror. We have heard stories and seen photos and collectively shaken our heads in shame that a country boasting of freedom could so quickly strip the liberties of its citizens.
Again, relocating internment does not make us innocent of its abuse. It just makes it easier to ignore.
My son was born in Bangkok on a Friday night during rush hour the first time Coldplay was in concert in Thailand...we almost didn't make it to the hospital.
I remember asking a lot of questions, because I was giving birth in a country where I honestly didn’t know the laws of birthright citizenship.
We brought this precious little nugget home from the hospital in the back of a taxi, and he was essentially stateless for a couple of weeks while we waited for an embassy appointment in order to defend that he was indeed our child and thus entitled to be a US Citizen.
We filled out loads of additional documents and paid hundreds of dollars, and THEN we were mailed this Certificate of Birth Abroad.
For the rest of his life, my son will have to guard this certificate to prove his legitimacy in the United States. But with the Trump administration willfully ignoring the US Constitution for the sake of its agenda, I wonder how secure his citizenship really is.
This week, three US-born children - including a 4-year-old with Stage 4 cancer - were removed from their country in an illegal deportation.
These children are American citizens. Their deportation is not only against the law – it is state-sanctioned trafficking to remove children from America against the wishes of one of the parents or legal guardians, and that is precisely what ICE did.
One of the little girls was shipped away before the courts could even process her father’s emergency petition or call her American aunt, who had legal custody to come and claim her.
And for the little boy with cancer—he was held without access to his medicine or the care of his doctors then was sent a thousand miles away from them.
If you have "We the People" lacquered to your truck’s back glass…
If you have ever argued your knowledge that our constitution outlines a “Republic” and not a “Democracy”…
If you have ever put your hand over your heart and pledged allegiance to our beautiful flag...
The time is now to raise up that flag in allegiance to our fellow Americans.
Whether or not you agree with the laws of birthright citizenship, I assume that you still respect the authority of our constitution.
Because here’s the thing:
If you don’t protect the 14th amendment, who will protect the 2nd?
If one part of our constitution is not upheld, we have lost the sacred validity of the whole document.
Republican or Democrat or somewhere in-between, we must beware that without the rule of law, the law becomes subject to the ruler.
It has been 86,510 days since the United States Constitution was ratified, becoming the law of our land. Americans have been relying on the rule of law a whole lot longer than the ruler of the last 100 days, and it’s our job to keep reminding him of that.
-lp