Originally Posted by LuvsParis

As someone who dabbles in constitutional law (as a consultant to law enforcement agencies, not as a lawyer, rather a researcher), I'm confused by one thing said by FB, who is usually quite comprehensible to me (I think the dialogue has gotten beyond my comprehension, perhaps - but I am still trying to understand).

FB said:

You do not have the right to use your right to return to your country to hide illegal activity.

How is that you know (you're not a judge or a constitutional scholar, right?) which of these two opposing "rights" comes first?

A criminal has the right to return to the U.S., and then be immediately arrested (it happens all the time; it happens after criminals agree to return and it happens when they simply get caught). But you can't arrest someone IN BETWEEN nations. That's un-possible. Jurisdictional issues PRECEDE other issues. The FBI will tell you that if you go talk to them - and they truly are experts in this area.

I believe that the Constitution underpins our right to return to our country (and then guarantees us many rights regarding due process).

Where's the due process in asserting this new "non-right" (you say we have no right to use our rights - but that's absurd on the face of it - of course we do).

A criminal has the right to return to their country - and THEN be interrogated and arrested.

That's why so many people are pointing out that joining the two processes (or putting the wrong one first) not only violates the Constitution, but makes it virtually impossible for any good prosecutor to then prosecute the criminal. Once you've violated a person's rights, courts frown very much on "evidence" collected during that violation.

Some day, this will all be sorted out (as we see it happening in the cases discussed in this thread) at ever higher levels of legal jurisdiction.

The agency you work for - which I'm sure you know way more about than the rest of us, FB, does not itself know more about the U.S. Constitution than the Supreme Court (or any court, for that matter - or even other parts of the same branch of government - which is the executive branch).

Obviously, more of us need to right to our congressmen about this. To have virtually untrained DHS personnel deciding which rights supercede other rights is ludicrous. Courts and laws decide this - not underlings of the executive branch.

So, some of us know more about your branch of employment (from the outside view) than you can - because you're inside it. I respect what you do very much (and I've been involved in LE training for 15 years for two agencies - one local and one federal). I help write training manuals from time to time and have trained many trainers. The people I've interviewed (top level LE personnel, obviously) to get the information together to do the training and the legal research we've done (I'm part of a team) is enormous - and it's just on a couple of small areas we're discussing here.

But the right of a U.S. citizen to return to U.S. soil is, in the view of many, absolute and inviolable. If a person is a suspect, for any reason, then due process begins- on U.S. soil, not in Limbo Zone.

These same tactics (Limbo Zone tactics) are scary to me because they are used in Banana Republics and under regimes like the Soviet regime to wreak all kinds of havock on citizens - it's an underhanded way of doing business.

But, we'll wait for the slow, slow wheels of Justice to turn. Meanwhile, I think we need a new top dog at DHS. I am very disappointed in our president's choice - and he has expressed dissatisfaction at some of his own choices (although when he mentioned his dissatisfaction, it was unclear which branches he meant - I think he made a huge mistake on DOI, as well - and many people I know who contributed heavily to his campaign think the same).

Unlike environmental issues, traveler's issues have no clear, obvious lobbying in Washington (the airline lobbies are hardly the right ones for travelers, although you'd think they'd be more concerned about that small percentage of potential customers who aren't traveling, due to TSA issues).

Probably the best representative to contact, realistically, is one's own congressman - Senators don't pay attention to stuff like this.