Without Due Process… Isn’t it Just Kidnapping?

It pains me to use my precious column space to provide basic civics lessons, but it seems that most Americans need them.

Since my February article “Three Unequal Branches of Government?” I have asked everybody I meet if they know that there is just one primary branch of government. Not one knew that. When asked if they could guess which branch is primary, not one got it correct. That is worse than random chance.

Most guess that it is the Executive/President. One guessed the Supreme Court. No one seems to know that with a couple of minor exceptions, Congress is the only branch of government with powers specified in the Constitution.

Everything that Trump is doing now is supposed to be done by Congress. Including tariffs, spending or withholding money, creating or shutting down agencies.

Two terms that seem to create a bored look are “Constitutional” and “Due Process.” Yet without these protections aren’t we just a lawless dictatorship?

At the recent huge May Day rally in Santa Barbara I was gratified to see this sign: “Without Due Process It’s Just Kidnapping.”

Government and law enforcement have the power to seize people, imprison them, or even kill them. Any random criminal can do these things. Do my dear readers understand what makes a government arrest legal and not merely a kidnapping?

The answer is in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution: “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Note: It says, “No person.” Which means it applies to citizen and non-citizen alike.

Trump has admitted that he doesn’t understand this “due process” thing. He sees it as an absurd inconvenience to have millions of trials for the millions of people he wants to deport.

He has utilized the El Salvadorian prison as an adjunct torture camp and claims that once people are sent there, they are beyond due process.

I have an Egyptian immigrant friend who loves everything Trump is doing. He supports these mass deportations to the Salvadoran torture camp with no due process. He does not seem to grasp that someone like him is a prime target. Anyone could call Trump’s thugs and say that he is a Middle Eastern terrorist. He has an accent and has dark skin. That seems to be all that these thugs need to kidnap people.

Carl Sandburg said, “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts.”

But we are supposed to be a country of laws. I have been talking to Trump supporters who say, “Don’t you see that there is government waste? All that Trump and Musk are doing is finding waste and eliminating it.”

As a factual matter there is no evidence that they have found any actual waste and eliminated it. There is not any evidence that they have even tried to look for waste or have any system to seek it out. Their actions are motivated by pure vengeance. But there is a legal matter that even if they found waste, they have no legal right to effectively shut down the National Institutes of Health. Which they have done. Destroying years of research trials in progress that cannot be recovered.

It is a fact that tens of thousands of people worldwide are getting unnecessary diseases and dying because of Trump’s destruction of USAID. It is a matter of law that only Congress has the legal power to disassemble USAID. Congress created USAID. Congress funded it. The only relevant power the President wields is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”. Meaning, that Trump’s only job is to make sure that USAID continues the mission mandated and funded by Congress.

Maybe you don’t care if no new drugs are found through NIH research? Or that tuberculosis may come back to bite us at home after we let it rage abroad?

But maybe you should care that Trump is saying that he might start deporting U.S. citizens to hell holes like the El Salvador torture prison? That you are just one vengeful anonymous tip away from being one of those deportees?