IMMIGRANTS, LEGAL & ILLEGAL, UNPROTECTED BY CONSTITUTION

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JULIA PRESTON, NY TIMES - Long Island officials protested when federal
agents searching for immigrant gang members raided local homes two weeks
ago. The agents had rousted American citizens and legal immigrants from
their beds in the night, complained Lawrence W. Mulvey, the Nassau
County police commissioner, and arrested suspected illegal immigrants
without so much as a warrant.

"We don't need warrants to make the arrests," responded Peter J. Smith,
the special agent in charge in New York for Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, or ICE, the agency that conducted the raids.

His concise answer helps explain the friction that the Bush
administration's recent campaign of immigration enforcement has caused.
Last week, immigration officials announced that they had made more than
1,300 arrests across the country over the summer when they went looking
for gang members. Since the raids were carried out under immigration
law, many protections in place under the American criminal codes did not
apply. Foreign residents of the United States, whether here legally or
not, answer to a different set of rules.

Immigration agents are not required to obtain warrants to detain
suspects. The agents also have broad authority to question people about
their immigration status and to search them and their homes. There are
no Miranda rights that agents must read when making arrests. Detained
immigrants have the right to a lawyer, but only one they can pay for. .
.

"Buried within the proud history of our nation of immigrants, shrouded
but always present, there exists a distinct system," wrote Daniel
Kanstroom, a law professor at Boston College, in his book "Deportation
Nation: Outsiders in American History," which traces the history of the
immigration code. To begin with, he writes, the Constitution does not
specifically address the government's power to control immigration. This
is "not a small problem for a nation of immigrants," he notes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/weekinreview/14cooper.html?_
r=1&ref=weekinreview&oref=slogin


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