Bring Us the Body
There’s something thrillingly concrete about the term.
Habeas corpus means “you should have the body.” Imagine a crowd of restive citizens. One of their number has been nabbed by the authorities and dumped into a spider hole by an unscrupulous ruler. No due process. No proceedings of the court. It’s the nightmare prospect of extrajudicial punishment, in this case permanent disappearance.
But the milling crowd will have none of this tyranny. They push Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller face down in the dirt and demand that the ruler honor habeas corpus. They demand the physical person of the accused and a proper hearing to determine his status. Does he deserve to be detained by the administration, or should he be freed in preparation to defend his innocence? Trump may nefariously press his case, but the accused cannot be held without charges. For a living democracy, that would be a horror show.
This is the principle now at state. Standing in as the Goebbels of the Administration, Miller has announced that the end is near. Whether it’s actual fact or Depravity Signaling (TM) he has just announced that habeas corpus is headed for the dung heap. Despite stare decisis (settled law), the assurances of the Constitution, and our intuitive sense that America would go under without the guarantee of universal due process, persons without documents will be stripped of their rights. No habeas corpus for you, Mr. Sanchez. Sorry Rosalita, the jig is up.
What we should imagine here is not a crowd of Constitutionalists, but a reptilian Administration frustrated by annoyances. Things like Law, or Fairness, or Established Practice. Or maybe the Basic Underpinnings of American Civilization. The official excuse is that this is a wartime emergency. We have been invaded by the Nicaraguan Army, along with the Columbian Army, and the Mexican Army, along with every other imaginary army on Earth! Even during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln hesitated on this issue. The fact that he ultimately decided to suspend is a gargantuan mark against his reputation, even though he could say, legitimately, that the country had been invaded by the South. Confederate troops were a stone’s throw from Washington. Trump’s imaginary armies do not exist. Wake me up when they take over our Walmarts.
It’s not good for children or other living things to live in a world where people are disappeared. That would make us a failed state, a junta that drugs its political enemies and drops them from planes to be eaten by sharks. If I wanted to live in Argentina in the 1970s, I know where to find a regime just like it. But I am, for better and worse, an American, and I don’t like it when our officials start speaking like generalissimos.
Because there is always time for a legitimate trial. In the time it takes for Dear Leader in the White House to source yet another tawdry bowling trophy for the mantle over the fireplace in the Oval Office, we probably have time for two or three. Nobody is saying that criminals should remain in the country, but a person that has never committed a crime in her life, who pays her taxes, and raises gentle, law-abiding children? The categories that apply are mercy and generosity. We need to find a way to give her the gift of citizenship.