Thursday, February 07, 2008
Conviction or acquittal, it's all the same if you're an immigrant
Hillary Clinton made the news recently with her comments that "Anybody who committed a crime in this country or in the country they came from has to be deported immediately, with no legal process. They are immediately gone." Yeah, can't have any of that "legal process" mumbo-jumbo.
I wonder what Clinton (or any other candidate) will have to say about Lyglenson Lemorin. Lemorin is the person who was acquitted of all charges in the farcical (and continuing) trial of the Liberty City 7. No matter, the government is now moving to deport him as a "terrorist", despite the fact that he's a legal permanent resident of the United States with no criminal record whatsoever and was acquitted of terrorism (actually "conspiracy to commit terrorism," since no actual act of terrorism was even in progress, much less committed). Clinton may be somewhat mollified by the fact that, although there is a "legal process" the government has to follow to have him deported, the standards for that process are rather low:
It's not a case of double jeopardy [Ed. note: I presume because this isn't a criminal proceeding]. This time, Lemorin goes before an administrative judge in immigration court, which has a lower standard of proof and no jury of his peers.
