Migrants not here yet, but claiming constitutional right

The head of an immigration enforcement group says it's the height of absurdity for members of the migrant caravan – while still in Mexico – to preemptively file a lawsuit demanding that they be let into the United States.

As the migrant caravan moves north toward the U.S. border, 12 Honduran nationals in the group have filed a class-action lawsuit against President Donald Trump, claiming that he intends to violate their Fifth Amendment right to not "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The suit is being filed despite the fact that the migrants – who have no legal or resident ties to the United States – are not under U.S. jurisdiction, and therefore enjoy no protections under the Constitution.

Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. He doesn't see how this suit will even get to first base.

"These are foreigners abroad who have not even yet suffered whatever supposed injury they're going to be claiming," he exclaims. "[As foreigners] they can't preemptively file a lawsuit abroad ... demanding that they be let in the country."

In Krikorian's opinion, this lawsuit seems too absurd even for a San Francisco activist judge.

"Quite honestly this is the kind of frivolous lawsuit that judges should be sanctioning lawyers for bringing," he argues. "That may be a little too much to hope for, but the idea that these people would even be considered to have standing really would suggest that our judiciary has completely gone off the rails with regards to Trump. In other words, they're no longer concerned with law in any respect."

"It's simply a naked assertion of power," he concludes.

But that's not to say judges couldn't play a role in resolving the caravan issue. CIS argues that the best way to deter future caravans would be to not only send troops to the border – which the Trump administration has done – but also to send immigration judges as well. Those judges, writes CIS's Andrew Arthur, could quickly screen those migrants who arrive in this caravan.

"If their purpose in coming to the United States is to live and work in this country (the likely goal of most, if not all of those migrants), then detention, expedited screening for credible fear by asylum officers, and expedited adjudication of the asylum applications filed by those aliens found to have a credible fear ... will be key" to deterrence, he states.