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Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents apprehend an an illegal immigrant with criminal record during an early morning raid in Los Angeles, California, on Sept. 8, 2022. (Irfan Khan - Los Angeles Times / Getty Images)

Responding to a Reader: Here's How Illegals Ended Up with 'Due Process' Rights

By Josh Manning May 29, 2025 at 5:45am

Recently a reader asked The Western Journal to explain the legal basis for illegal aliens having the “right to due process,” saying he couldn’t see any rights in the Constitution that specifically apply to illegals.

Reader, you are 100 percent right that the Constitution and Bill of Rights were meant to enshrine and protect the rights of American citizens. But over time constitutional rights were expanded again and again to apply to more people, but rarely did those expansions come from Congress.

The power behind the expansion was, as you might guess, the Supreme Court. Four key decisions led us to the point we’re at (and a handful of others contributed but not very much). While some make more sense than others, the idea that non-citizens enjoy virtually every single benefit and protection that American citizens enjoy raises the awkward question of “why bother becoming a citizen?” And under the scheme created by SCOTUS, there presently isn’t a very compelling answer to that question.

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Tags:

Bill of Rights, Constitution, Due process, Fifth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, Illegal immigration, San Francisco, Supreme Court, Texas

Josh Manning

Contributing Editor

SummaryMore Biographical InformationRecent PostsContact

Josh Manning is a contributing editor at The Western Journal. He holds a masters in public policy from Harvard University and has a background in higher education. He recently co-authored Out of the Shadows: My Life Inside the Wild World of Hunter Biden, the tell-all memoir of Lunden Roberts's tumultuous relationship with Hunter Biden and Stolen Valor: The Military Fraud and Government Failures of Tim Walz.

@Josh_Manning

Josh Manning grew up outside of Memphis, TN and developed a love of history, politics, and government studies thanks to a life-changing history and civics teacher named Mr. McBride.

He holds an MPP from Harvard University and a BA from Lyon College, a small but distinguished liberal arts college where later in his career he served as an interim vice president.

While in school he did everything possible to confront, discomfit, and drive ivy league liberals to their knees.

After a number of years working in academe, he moved to digital journalism and opinion. Since that point, he has held various leadership positions at The Western Journal.

He's married to a gorgeous blonde who played in the 1998 NCAA women's basketball championship game, and he has two teens who hate doing dishes more than poison. He makes life possible for two boxers -- "Hank" Rearden Manning and "Tucker" Carlson Manning -- and a pitbull named Nikki Haley "Gracie" Manning.

He recently co-authored Out of the Shadows: My Life Inside the Wild World of Hunter Biden, the tell-all memoir of Lunden Roberts's tumultuous relationship with Hunter Biden and Stolen Valor: The Military Fraud and Government Failures of Tim Walz.

Education

MPP from Harvard University, BA from Lyon College

Location

Arkansas

Languages Spoken

English, tiny fragments of college French

Topics of Expertise

Writing, politics, Christianity, social media curation, higher education, firearms