Vindicating constitutional rights, case by case ...

Immigration law enforcement seems to encourage legal bad actions and legal bad actors. Or so it seems. A couple of current cases:

At the Supreme Court last week, justices listened skeptically to a case which turns on the verb to "encourage." Apparently there's federal stature that makes it a crime to "encourage" undocumented persons to come or stay in the United States.

As is so often the case at the high court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor put the issue in an everyday context.

Supreme Court Hears a Free Speech Challenge to an Immigration Law
... several justices suggested, the law would chill constitutionally protected speech.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked about a grandmother living in the United States without authorization. “The grandmother tells her son she’s worried about the burden she’s putting on the family,” the justice said. “And the son says: ‘Abuelita, you are never a burden to us. If you want to continue living here with us, your grandchildren love having you.’”

Justice Sotomayor asked whether the government could prosecute the son.

Brian H. Fletcher, a lawyer for the federal government defending the law, did not give a definitive answer. “I think not,” he said.

That frustrated Justice Sotomayor. “Stop qualifying with ‘think,’ because the minute you start qualifying with ‘think,’ then you’re rendering asunder the First Amendment,” she said. “People have to know what they can talk about.

It's hard to have much hope that anything the Supremes do will uphold common sense or freedom these days, but just maybe they won't want to further sully their record on this one.

Clergy stand with migrants in San Mateo County, CA in 2018

It took four years, but a federal court has ruled that Department of Homeland Security operatives wrongly cancelled a pastor's visa and surveilled her -- all because she participated in a "Sanctuary Caravan," meeting asylum-seekers gathered in Mexico. It's not like she tried to sneak people across the border; she ministered to people in trouble.

Judge rules immigration officials violated pastor’s religious freedom rights

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Todd W. Robinson said the Rev. Kaji Douša had established that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection had “unlawfully retaliated against her for her protected First Amendment activity, violated her Free Exercise right to minister to migrants in Mexico, and violated” the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Douša, the senior pastor of Park Avenue Christian Church, celebrated the ruling in a statement to Religion News Service on Monday (March 27).

“I am overwhelmed with gratitude for Judge Robinson’s sound, fair and just ruling,” Douša said. “The government’s approach — stalling, gaslighting, even lying — was entirely unconvincing to the court, and I am thrilled for the vindication. Judge Robinson cleared my name, and I thank God for it.”

This one reminds me of our long ago No Fly List case. Those people that run the border think they can get away with anything and it is vital to chip away when they unlawfully assume non-existent authority.