If the answer is “everyone within the bounds of the USA”,
a. Do unwanted visitors also have Constitutional Rights? (such as illegal immigrants who gained access by force or deception)
b. What about invading armies (organized armed soldiers who carry weapons. Last seen in ww2). Do they get Constitutional Rights?
Source for this question: City Argues Immigrant Killed by Police Has No Constitutional Rights
From The Constitutional Rights of Noncitizens | Learn Liberty :
From OP’s cite:
The rights laid out by the Constitution are limits to the power of the federal government. Those limits apply to the government. It we say that only citizens have the right to due process, then there is nothing to stop the government from denying someone’s citizenship, depriving them of due process, and executing them. Citizens only have rights if the government’s power is limited.
In Mississippi, a municipality is arguing that an undocumented immigrant who was killed when the cops burst into the wrong house and shot him in the back of the head has no constitutional rights.
Was reading the OP and the provided link that difficult of a task?
I was curious what sort of attorney would make such an absurd argument. I have found that it is the type of attorney who has this type of website to drum up business.
The answer, as always, is “it depends.” Noncitizens have most of the same rights as citizens. Obviously, we* can’t vote, or hold most public offices, or become president even after attaining citizenship, but those are exceptions. However, SCOTUS has consistently held that the political branches (Congress and the POTUS) have broad authority over foreign policy and national security, and has deemed immigration to fall within those spheres. So the courts defer to the political branches on most immigration issues. Resultantly, many constitutional protections are limited for immigrants when it comes to their status as immigrants (mjmlab’s link refers to this doctrine as the “plenary power” doctrine).
That is not true of state and local governments, and there is absolutely no legal support for the argument that a local law enforcement agency can shoot an undocumented worker in the head because the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply. I am not sure that is the exact argument actually being made; the reporting on the Lopez case provides only snippets without the full context.
Ugh. Having a site design like that violates my VIII amendment rights.
As for the OP’s b), I would assume that enemy soldiers’ rights are dictated by the Geneva Convention, which were applied to the many prisoners of war housed in the U.S. Trying to apply rights to an invading army before they are captured is obviously meaningless.
I have no idea what the OP means by invading armies carrying weapons in WWII. A small number of German spies were caught trying to infiltrate, but by definition, spies out of uniform are not soldiers. They are covered by the Espionage Act of 1917, and first amendment speech does not apply. At the same time, U.S. soldiers are tried according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which has its own set of rules and procedures.
Just a guess, but there were pilots that crashed and were eventually captured during the battle of Pearl Harbor. Also, Japan occupied two Aleutian Islands during the war. I’m not sure if the Aleuts knew they were American at the time.
As both of these happened in territories and not in states, I can see overlooking them as instances of one imperial force replacing another.
This is a deep and somewhat murky part of the law. I believe that Hawaii and Alaska were incorporated territories during WWII. That’s an important distinction, because unincorporated territories, such as Puerto Rico, are not entitled to full constitutional rights.
I’ll let SamuelA define what he meant, rather than trying to guess.
One could argue POWs were treated in accordance with the Constitution, anyway. They were treated humanely, and were incarcerated after a form of “due process” - it wasn’t the kind you’d process a car thief through, but identifying a man as an enemy soldier and then detaining him in accordance with the Geneva Convention is due process of a sort.
Is this really what you meant to say? Does it mean Puerto Rico can adopt some laws that would be (federally) unconstitutional? Certainly Puerto Ricans are citizens and entitled to all Constitutional rights when in one of the 50 states.
That didn’t make sense to me either. I always thought the Constitution applied to the territories just as much as the states.
I don’t think there’s a question that the Constitutional rights apply to everyone in the US. If a Canadian in the US is charged with a crime, he has the same Miranda rights and right to trial by jury and a court-appointed lawyer as anyone else. If they did not, then any non-citizen could be jailed without cause and imprisoned indefinitely without due process.
Plus the Constitution explicitly provides for Congress to make rules concerning captures on land and water.
After the Spanish-American war, there was a series of court cases that dealt with this issue. They are called the “insular cases” because they dealt with the new territory the US acquired from Spain, which were islands, like Puerto Rico and the Philippines. The issue was whether he US Constitution fully applies in the territories.
The Supreme Court held that the Constitution does not fully apply. It drew a distinction between incorporated territories, like the territories in the continental US, which were on the road to statehood, and unincorporated territories, the conquered islands, which were not. The US Constitution therefore doesn’t fully apply in Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and any other little bits of the US empire.
See the wiki article on it:
Or just shot on sight.
I meant at the instant the u boat soldiers came ashore, but before they changed clothes and buried their uniforms, they were an invading army. A really small one. And I just wondered which Constitutional rights applied.
Also some conservatives see an army of illegal migrants who broke in with force or deceit (cutting fences or sneaking) as Invaders, though the difference is they are each individually doing this or in relatively small family units.
It applies to citizens of the territories, but not to the territories themselves, except to the extent that Congress chooses. So Puerto Ricans are guaranteed a trial by jury when they are in the mainland U.S., but they are not guaranteed a trial by jury in Puerto Rico (except to the extent that Puerto Rico’s own constitution guarantees one).
My understanding was that the rights enumerated in the constitution were inherent in the nature of man, rather than being granted by any document. In this light, citizens of China or wherever are entitled to all the rights that Americans are (other than the specific exclusion noted by previous posters) and it’s just their government’s refusal to protect/support those rights that prevents them from exercising those rights. By this, it would stand to reason that when anyone comes under the control/protection of the US Government, their existing rights should instantly be recognized and protected by the US government, right?