The Thin Red Line

The only law that prevents a black site from becoming your new address

Imagine you can’t sleep and you’re staring out your apartment window one night about 1:30 AM, and you see several SUVs pull up to the building across the street. No flashing lights, no sirens, no uniforms. You watch several armed men jump out and enter the building. You open your camera and press record on your phone. Shortly thereafter, the goons silently emerge—hauling away three people—gagged and ziptied. The whole thing is over in less than five minutes. As the SUVs slip away into the darkness, you wonder if your eyes were playing tricks on you. You pinch yourself. Was this a dream? But then you play back the video—and sure enough you just watched a “disappearance,” or what’s called extrajudicial detention in legalese. That is, if these were actual cops or military in plainclothes. Was it an arrest, or a straight-up kidnapping?

There’s no way to tell.

Most people on your block stayed asleep. The next morning, a small crowd begins to gather outside the building. You go downstairs. The rumor mill is working overtime. A few people saw the commotion. Others say they knew the people who were dragged out. Some insist that they must have been illegal immigrants. Others say, “No, I knew them, they were citizens!” Most are simply asking, What the fuck happened last night? You say “I saw the whole thing,” and play your video as people crowd around to catch a glimpse.

A nine-year-old boy wanders out of the building. “Has anyone seen my parents?” The crowd comforts the child as he sobs, “I woke up this morning, and my mom and dad and brother were gone!”

Later that day relatives of the missing family show up, looking for answers. You send them your video, hoping to help. As an eyewitness, you offer to testify. In the coming days, you learn that there’s no record of the “arrest.” Reporters are now on the story, but the cops don’t know anything. ICE is stonewalling. Information begins to filter out about the missing: They’re activists who’ve run a YouTube channel focused on legal aid for immigrants and refugees for nearly a decade. They’re American citizens.

But now they officially don’t exist.

The above scenario is PRECISELY what habeas corpus is meant to prevent. It holds the government accountable for getting a judicial warrant, documenting any arrests, and bringing them before a judge within 48 hours for a probable cause determination. It requires them to disclose who is being held and where. And it gives the accused a path to challenge unlawful imprisonment.

That’s why it’s called habeas corpus: Produce the body.

It is one of the oldest and most fundamental safeguards in the Anglo-American legal tradition—recognized in English common law as early as the 12th century and codified in the Magna Carta in 1215. The U.S. Constitution enshrines it in Article I, Section 9, stating that it shall not be suspended “unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” It has only been suspended twice in American history: by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, and functionally curtailed under George W. Bush through the Military Commissions Act, which denied habeas rights to foreign nationals held at Guantánamo Bay. That law was later ruled unconstitutional. Both cases were controversial. Both triggered constitutional crises. And both were far narrower in scope than what’s now being considered.

Habeas corpus is the thin red line between lawful arrest and state-sponsored disappearance.

And it’s the only thing holding cops and federal agents accountable from just arresting anyone, anytime—and potentially disappearing them into legal limbo, with no way out.

Once that line is erased, a nation becomes a totalitarian dictatorship.

Once that line is erased, no one is safe.

That’s how it works in El Salvador. That’s the origin of CECOT—the mega-prison where Bukele warehouses tens of thousands of human beings with no recourse, outside the rule of law. Suspend habeas corpus, and the United States becomes just such a carceral state.

The Trump regime’s immigration policy architect Stephen Miller is openly speculating about eliminating this all-important right. He says we need to ditch habeas corpus to “streamline” immigration enforcement.

And he’s not being subtle. In a May 8 interview with NBC News, Miller said: “In times of war or invasion, the Constitution allows for habeas corpus to be suspended. We’re looking closely at that option now. It’s not just about border control—it’s about national sovereignty.”

But that’s pure Nazi bullshit. The real target of the suspension is AMERICAN CITIZENS the regime wants to silence. And anyone else at all. Remember—the Holocaust began with just such deportations.

Eliminating habeas corpus for immigrants is the same as eliminating it for EVERYONE. Because when the government can arrest anyone without charge, there’s no formal process to determine their citizenship status. We’ll never know who’s being hauled away. There’s no way to find out what they might have done wrong. No access to attorneys. No information for families.

In short, no hope.

And we’ll have to get used to the idea that our own lives—or the lives of any of our friends or family—could just as easily be destroyed in a midnight raid.

We’re not even six months into this administration, and already it’s flirting with tearing up one of the Constitution’s most fundamental rights, that underpins every other.

Freedom of speech doesn’t exist without habeas corpus.

Freedom of the press doesn’t exist without habeas corpus.

Freedom of religion doesn’t exist without habeas corpus.

Freedom of assembly doesn’t exist without habeas corpus.

Nor do property rights. Or any other rights.

If habeas corpus goes away, so does the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—America’s foundational creed.

If habeas corpus goes away, America is over.

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