Flowers: Hate to say it, but AOC is right about this one

If you listen to some right-wing pundits, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is running a smuggling ring across the southern border.

Far be it from me to defend La Cortez, but I find the misrepresentations from those who think there is a Constitution-free zone in this country to be annoying. It evinces ignorance at best, and at its worst, a desire to simply pretend that due process is discretionary. It’s not.

It’s the backbone of our legal system and if you decide that it’s OK to deprive immigrants of those established rights, it’s a shortstep to denying other groups.

Tom Homan, the new director of ICE, recently called AOC one of the “dumbest congresswomen in DC” and slyly suggested that counseling immigrants on how to avoid arrest was illegal.

Homan knows this is a crock of frijoles and arroz. What AOC and other immigration advocates are doing is trying to explain what immigrants can demand, and what they cannot, under the current laws of this country.

Everyone who lives in the United States has the right to due process. The Supreme Court has made clear that your immigration status does not deprive you of those rights.

In Reno vs. Flores, in a majority opinion written by the great Antonin Scalia, the court held “it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”

He does not write “legal aliens”.

Scalia was a very smart man, and knew the Constitution did not limit the gamut of legal protections to those who had “permission” to be in this country.

As the Fifth Amendment clearly provides, “no person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

It says “person”. It doesn’t say “person with a U.S. passport”.

So we can dispense with the idea that advising people how to exercise their rights is anything other than a tribute to the grandeur of the U.S. Constitution, the genius of the founders, and the integrity of a great Italian American jurist.

Scalia was as conservative as they come, but he wasn’t about to play games with that sacred document simply to score political points.

For that same reason, I’m not about to criticize AOC for insisting on telling immigrants they don’t have to let ICE agents into their homes without first presenting a signed warrant, they don’t have to say anything without first consulting with an attorney, and they don’t need to give up and stop fighting removal simply because some overpaid, blow-dried cable news host says they have to.

It’s disturbing to hear otherwise lovely people insist I don’t know anything about due process because Jesse Watters told them “illegals” don’t have any rights, and the guy who cheated on his wife but pretends to be a fountain of wisdom must be correct.

He is not. Many of the others who are mocking the often-mockable AOC are also wrong.

In this, she is being courageous and much more American than people who wrap themselves in the flag, but would do better spending some time immersed in the Bill of Rights.

Imagine how difficult it is for me to have to defend the woman who I once called “the Bartender” and underestimated when she was whining about her fears about Jan. 6, when she was over a mile from the action.

Imagine how difficult it is for me to find more in common with the gal who took nice PR shots at the border fence, in her adorable white suit, than with Republican politicos.

Imagine me, defending the lady who thinks “Latinx” is actually a thing, when pretty much every Latina I know is insulted by this Waspy colonization of language.

But guess what? She’s right. Even though she’s on the left. Even Scalia would agree.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist and can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.