There are words in the English language which sound more negative or more dour than they actually are. One such example is the word “sanguine” which, at least to me, sounds quite sedate, or apathetic or devoid of feeling. But the converse is, surprisingly, true with respect to its meaning. The word means: “optimistic or positive, especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation.”
I believe the term “habeas corpus” falls into that category of words, which conjure up, connotatively, a sinister, an ominous and, perhaps, a more macabre feeling which surrounds how it sounds. Could you, my dear reader, view it, just by the way it sounds, as, possibly, being related to a word like “cadaver”, which refers to “a corpse…a dead human body”? But I assure you, that the term under consideration is quite positive from the way that it sounds.
Habeas corpus is a legal procedure by which a report can be made to a court alleging the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual and requesting that the court order the individual’s custodian to bring the prisoner to court, to determine whether their detention is lawful. Habeas corpus is generally enforced via writ, and accordingly referred to as a writ of habeas corpus. It is one of the rights open to citizens and to non-citizens in the United States. It is part of the due process of law which is open to all — the innocent as well as the guilty — as it is enshrined within the US Constitution.
Everyone is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. But the way that habeas corpus is being interpreted and is being used by the current US Administration borders on the hocus-pocus of cackling witches, clothed in black robes, in a children’s fairytale, uttering incantations while stirring a huge steaming pot, with grotesque-looking and foul-smelling ingredients in a magic potion being brewed over raging flames. The law becomes trite — even comical — when it is fraught with inconsistencies in application.
There are different elements to established laws in any society, and one admirable quality about them is their consistency which, in certain respects, mirrors those which we observe in nature. If the law of gravity, for example, was one that fluctuated daily then it would but utterly confuse or put a halt on so many activities that we have come to take for granted. What would one’s attempt to leap off a diving board into a swimming pool turn out to be? What would be the behaviour of projectiles which are fired from guns during a shoot-out between cops and robbers? And what about the take-offs and the landings of aerodynamically designed airframes and power plant systems which were made to operate within the stable phenomenon of gravity?
The laws of jurisprudence — whether good or evil, or whether humane or draconian — all serve to hold societies together, both promoting and maintaining order. Once, therefore, they lose their integrity with respect to their stability and to their consistency, which the current Administration appeared to have created by suspending habeas corpus for many individuals, a suspension which was only done during times of war, then our laws would cease to be what they were crafted to represent and to achieve.
Cheryl Mills, an American lawyer and corporate executive, was right when she said that: “We cannot uphold the rule of law only when it is consistent with our beliefs. We must uphold it even when it protects behaviour that we don’t like or is unattractive or is not admirable or that might even be hurtful.”
The Trump Administration has tried to justify, might and main, and in a tortuous fashion, its mass deportations of illegal aliens and, in a mind-boggling manner, even of those born within the United States, without giving such individuals their day in court, by invoking the specters of war and of terrorism. The courts of this land, again and again — even those justices on the Supreme Court who overtly or tacitly support the policies — have ruled against such reckless policies on the grounds of due process of law which finds its roots within the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. Such a contradiction, as found in the Administration’s approach to habeas corpus, is reflected in the following question raised in one of the Apostle Paul’s Christian dialectic:“But if our unrighteousness commends the righteousness of God, what shall we say?” Again, the following words of Yoichi Ito, a Japanese entrepreneur, are consistent with this discussion: “If we destroy human rights and rule of law in the response to terrorism, they have won.” Furthermore, the rank instability and the glaring inconsistency, as exhibited by the Trump Administration to habeas corpus, is of a nature which is akin to schizophrenia.
This Administration has had no problems arresting people without reading them their Miranda rights, has had no problems ignoring the documentation presented by those who were arrested which proved their legitimate rights to be in this country, has had no problems imprisoning them without legal representation before deporting them, and has had no problem defying court orders with respect to habeas corpus, even for those who were innocent — not having committed any crimes. But then habeas corpus is, on the flip side, vociferously recognized, demanded and complied with when an immigrant actually commits a crime, especially when human lives are lost, as in the case of the Egyptian who recently went on a rampage to try and kill and maim as many people of Jewish heritage in retaliation against the nation of Israel’s carnage that is being committed against the Palestinians in Gaza as possible.
Many in the world would agree that Israel’s response is wholly disproportionate to the lives which were lost in Israel from the horrific attack which Hamas launched on October 7, 2023. But I digress. The alleged innocence of immigrants was not enough to prevent arrest, deportation or even a return to the US, but it appears that allegations of crimes will produce a ticket home to have their day in court, as in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran who was arrested in error and deported to El Salvador, and who was brought back into the US on Friday, June 6, 2025 on newfound charges of trafficking migrants before his deportation on March 15, 2025.
So much for law and order with an Administration which does not abide by law and order. So much for law and order with an Administration which mocks law and order by pardoning those who had, blatantly and unrepentantly, scoffed at law and order. So much for law and order with an Administration which views the Constitution as an obstruction to and not a safeguard for law and order. This hocus-pocus does not augur well for this country. “If the foundations be destroyed” as the psalmist asked, “what can the righteous do?” Hocus-pocus! Hocus-pocus! Hocus-pocus, indeed!
