GROUPS SUE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO PROVIDE LAWYERS FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT CHILDREN

Immigrant-rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit against the Obama administration for failing to provide legal representation to illegal immigrant children in deportation hearings Wednesday. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, American Immigration Council, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Public Counsel, and K&L Gates LLP, it is an injustice that many illegal immigrant minors appear before immigration courts without an attorney. "If we believe in due process for children in our country, then we cannot abandon them when they face deportation in our immigration courts," Ahilan Arulanantham, senior staff attorney with the ACLU, said in a statement, pointing out that the government always has representation by a trained prosecutor. J.E.F.M. v. Holder — the 27-page suit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle — charges that the government is violating the illegal immigrants’ due process rights and the Immigration and Nationality Act by failing to provide the minors with legal representation. “Both the Constitution and the immigration laws guarantee all children the right to a full and fair removal hearing, including the opportunity to defend against deportation and seek any forms of relief that would enable them to remain in the United States,” the suit argues. The groups filed suit on behalf of eight minors in deportation proceedings. “The plight of these eight children is not unique. Plaintiffs seek to represent a class of unrepresented children, all of whom face deportation,” it reads. The suit comes as tens of thousands of unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors flood across the border. Since October, more then 52,000 unaccompanied immigrant minors have crossed the southern border into the U.S. illegally in what many deem to be a crisis. The Obama administration recently announced an effort to provide legal assistance to the young immigrants facing deportation.

We are now into the world of the absurd! First illegals invade our country and now they want us to provide freaking lawyers to represent them!

These anti-American welfare seeking criminals cross our border illegally and we are suppose to PAY for their legal defense?

It may be the law but it is immoral to do so.

I fear nothing short of a complete societal collapse will stop the left from changing our Republic into a spanish speaking third world sewer.

"... for failing to provide legal representation to illegal immigrant children ..."

There's two constitutional problems with Obama's so-called failure to provide legal representation to illegal immigrant children imo. First, based on the wording in Secton 1 of the 14th Amendment (14A) and wording in a 14A-related case excerpt, constitutionally enumerated protections don't necessarily apply to non-citizens imo.

"From 14A, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States [emphasis added]; ..."
“3. The right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship [emphasis added] before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that amendment does not add to these privileges and immunities. ...” —Minor v. Happersett, 1874.

And not only am I not convinced that illegal immigrants have constitutional protections, the 6th Amendment right to legal representation in this case, but please consider the following.

Since the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for immigration purposes, immigration a state power issue, I don't see how the feds can justify appropriating funds for legal council for illegal immigrants.

“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.

As a side note concerning the federal government's constitutionally limited powers, please consider the following. The states would sure be a dull, boring place to grow up and live in if parents were to make sure that their children were taught about the federal government's constitutionally limited powers as the Founding States had intended for those powers to be understood. /sarc

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