Due process protects citizens; when it’s taken away, you may be next

Photo by Alejandro Cartagena 🇲🇽🏳‍🌈 on Unsplash

I am so angry—furious, actually—that we even have to explain this: due process is not a luxury.

It’s not some optional courtesy we extend to the “deserving.”

It’s a constitutional guarantee.

And yet here we are, again, watching people cheer as President Trump doubles down on his efforts to deny that very right to undocumented immigrants.

“They’re illegal,” some shout, “They shouldn’t get any rights.”

But this rhetoric is not just cruel—it’s dangerously ignorant.

Due process is not about protecting people we like.

It exists precisely to protect everyone—especially those on the margins—because the power of the government must have limits.

And when you strip due process from anyone, you risk stripping it from everyone.

There have already been cases—numerous cases—where U.S. citizens have been deported, imprisoned, or detained because they were mistaken for undocumented immigrants.

People born on U.S. soil.

Veterans.

Mentally ill individuals.

Children.

Poor people without legal support.

Why did it happen?

Because the system failed—and there was no due process to catch the mistake.

The very idea of a government rounding up human beings and denying them the right to a hearing, to an attorney, to present evidence—is not just un-American.

It’s authoritarian.

It’s the stuff of regimes we were raised to fear.

And yet people applaud when it’s done to migrants, as if cruelty will fix anything.

Let me be clear: You don’t have to believe in open borders to believe in fairness.

You don’t have to be an immigration activist to demand justice.

But you do have to believe that no government should have the unchecked power to detain and deport without oversight.

That’s what due process ensures.

It’s what the Constitution demands.

And the second we pretend it doesn’t apply to “them,” we’ve already signed away the rights of all of us.

Because next time, the government’s mistake might be your name on that list.

And without due process, who will speak for you?