Our basic rights & freedoms are universal & irreducible

The Fourth Amendment prohibits search or seizure, not just of property and papers, but of people, without a warrant issued by a judge, based on probable cause, with evidence supporting that claim. The Ninth Amendment recognizes that rights need not be written into law to enjoy full and irreducible protection under law. The Fifth Amendment requires all people, no matter their immigration status, have due process before being deprived of life, liberty, or property. It also says no person can be compelled to be a witness against themselves. 

All of these rights guarantees also provide context for the rarely discussed, but vital Third Amendment, which prohibits anyone, including the federal government, from forcing people to allow soldiers to live in their homes. The wider context of the whole Bill of Rights is important, because the Third Amendment is more than just a note about British occupation in 1776 or 1812. It is a clear signal that under no circumstances should Americans seek or accept the militarization of their communities.

On July 3, a group of heavily armed masked men, wearing a variety of military-style outfits and claiming to be federal agents with the bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, marched onto a recreational baseball field in New York City. They began surrounding, menacing, and interrogating children, demanding to know “Where are you from? Where are your parents from?”

Noticing that the kids on the field were scared, a youth baseball coach intervened—in defense of the United States Constitution, and to safeguard the most fundamental rights of those children. He led the kids into the batting cage, and promised to defend them against violent aggression or unlawful detention. He reminded them that under the Fifth Amendment, they have a right to remain silent and not answer questions and informed the purported ICE agents that they would not be answering questions.

In an interview with New York’s local West Side Rag, Youman Wilder explained:

It’s all about civics. If you don’t know your rights, they will trample on them. Knowing the law and understanding that they had no right to ask anything of these kids, who are American citizens, and don’t have anything to prove to them. The officers were saying we don’t know if they are American citizens, but I said, it doesn’t matter if they are American citizens or not, they still have constitutional rights, you still violate their 4th, 5th, or 14th amendment rights.

The “agents” who refused to identify themselves, pointed combat weapons at children, and attempted to nullify the Bill of Rights, were committing numerous crimes by their actions. They reportedly claimed that by preventing unlawful detention and providing legally required information about Constitutional rights, the coach could be arrested for “obstructing” their paramilitary invasion of his baseball field.

A brave, patriotic youth baseball coach, driven by decency and the instinct to protect innocent children against violent aggression, says he told himself “I am willing to die today, to make sure [these kids] get home safe.”

In that moment of selfless courage, the coach not only protected those kids on that baseball field; he stood up for the fundamental rights and freedoms of all Americans, and for our founding laws, which protect those rights by making the protections universal and irreducible.

Paramilitary “sweeps” and “raids” involving combat weapons, body armor, masked agents with no identifying information, mass detention, without warrants, evidence, or due process, or any oversight by a court of law… these are crimes against every person living in the United States.

If baseball is not safe, nothing is safe. Not going to church on Sunday. Not getting ice cream cones on a hot summer day. Not going to the hospital to be treated for life-threatening illness or injury. Not serving your country with honor and self-sacrifice in the Armed Forces. ICE has not even respected the legal process for asylum, residency and naturalization.

The First Amendment guarantees the right “to peaceably Assemble”. That includes instituing local governments and state legislatures, as well as PTA meetings, and civil rights protests. And, it includes the right to join community groups, have picnics in parks, and yes, to play baseball, without armed gangs of men claiming to represent the government treating you as if you live in Nazi Germany, or some other God-forsaken place where rights and freedoms have no value and no defense. 

That is the experience those targeted by hate-based violence have long had. In the 1830s and 40s, the Know Nothing terrorist movement killed innocent people and burned churches, to attack immigrants. From the mid-19th century forward, the Ku Klux Klan committed acts of terror and mass killing, in hopes of establishing something like the Nazi regime. 

These terrorist movements were run by and comprised of traitors, people who had betrayed the most fundamental purpose of the nation. Some worked with the Nazis during the Depression and the Second World War. Some infiltrated police forces; some imprisoned people under false pretenses to re-establish human enslavement by another name: “convict leasing”. 

People summarily sentenced and unlawfully imprisoned have died in record numbers this year. A report on past deaths in ICE custody found 95% could have been prevented with medical care that was denied or delayed. Human life and freedom are being devalued, degraded, and erased, by extralegal paramilitary squads working to dismantle the everyday fabric of American communities.

In the United States, the transcendent human rights of every person have primacy over any of the whims of power. That is the purpose of the country. The President and those to whom he gives orders are servants, not rulers. They have no right to rule with an iron fist; they are constrained, absolutely and irreducibly, by the spirit and letter of the law.