Many people are content to let the Constitution hum along quietly in the background of our busy lives.

When we've only known life with these protections of our liberties, they can seem as immutable as the law of gravity.

But without vigilance, human made laws can quickly withdraw or corrupt our treasured American rights.

Case in point the Alien and Sedition Act from KERA in Dallas.

This is think I'm Krys Boyd.

The ink was not a decade dry on the Bill of Rights before four laws were put in place in 1798, in response to anxieties around war and how immigrants might change the American way of life.

Many scholars view the Alien and Sedition Acts now as a historic embarrassment, in contradiction with our stated values.

But as my guest reminds us in an introductory chapter, she wrote to a republication of the acts, the one that has done the most harm over the past two and a quarter centuries is not only still on the books, it is still being used as a basis for public policy.

Qian Julie Wang is managing partner of Gottlieb and Wang LLP, a firm that advocates for education and civil rights.

Chen, Julie, welcome back to.Thank.

Thank you so much for having me again, Krys.

Delighted to be here.

Will you just start by reminding us of the four separate laws that the Alien and Sedition Acts comprised will take them in turn in just a minute.

Absolutely.

So there were four acts that were part of the Alien and Sedition Act.

The first was the Alien Act, which prohibited, uh, non-citizens from, um, certain activity under the president.

That was only in effect for a certain amount of time.

The second was the Naturalization Act, which moved the right purview of omitting naturalization from the state to the federal government and extended the number of years required for citizenship.

Third was the alien um, Alien Enemies Act, which is still in effect, which has become irrelevant again during the Trump's second administration.

And the third is the Sedition Act, which also has since expired but prohibited certain acts of disagreeing with government policy and expressed opinions in the time that it was in effect.

The Naturalization Act is so interesting, it nearly tripled the amount of time it took to be considered a US citizen.

I hadn't been aware that the power to grant citizenship rights ever lay with the states.

Yes, absolutely.

So when the Constitution and the government was first established, the states had purview of who became citizen, and there were only five years of residency as opposed to a whopping 14 years.

Really reminds us of how if you had arrived in this country at a certain time, it was much more easy to become American than it is now.

And when the Alien and Sedition Acts passed.

Part of the fear that motivated the enactment was the importation of, quote unquote, foreign values.

And as such, the federal government saw fit to expand the amount of time to 14 years of residency to become citizen.

And it moves the purview to federal government so that they could approve who might qualify and who might not.

The Alien Act.

Not to be confused with the Alien Enemies Act, was sometimes referred to at the time as the Alien Friends Act, which turns out to be like quite an Orwellian term, right?

It was not at all friendly to immigrants.

No, it gave the president an unprecedented power at that time.

And I would argue in current law, probably a similarly unchecked power to jail and deport any immigrant that was suspected of being dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.

entirely denied immigrants the protection of due process and right to hearing that is otherwise guaranteed under the Constitution.

Who had the power to decide which aliens were potentially dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.

Under this act, only the president, the executive branch.

So his his advisors at the time.

Again, the Alien Act was specifically designed at passing to only be in effect for a certain amount of years.

And it conveniently lined up with John Adams's term through The Federalist.

It was set to expire right after the term that saw the enactment of the statute.

So John Adams had real problems with French people, in contradiction to his vice president, Thomas Jefferson.

Tell us why?

At the time in the 1790s, America was still a very young democracy, a young constitution, and we were seeing the French Revolution abroad.

A lot of dethroning of those who were placed in power.

And those sentiments carried forth in Philadelphia and throughout the United States.

There were a lot of European immigrants, including those from Great Britain, including those from France and the extent of the Revolution.

The extent of the carriage of that sentiment from overseas really gave our new government officials who were not confident in the foundation, I guess, of their powers, as well as of the integrity of this country, fear that they also would be dethroned.

There were a lot of protests, a lot of quite a bit of riots supporting French revolutionaries.

And as such, because the Federalists had great control over all of Congress at that point.

Federalists thought that it might be safer to pass and act like these four to further entrench their powers, at least for the tenure of their term.

There is a certain irony to the people in power at the time, the Americans thinking like, oh no, if you bring over a bunch of French people drunk on revolution, they're likely to do it all over again.

I mean, that was the whole reason we existed.

Absolutely.

We were the ones who rebelled and established our own independence.

But I think that we as a nation was still too young at that point for those installed to understand or trust in how things would look going forward.

So the Alien Act sounds a lot like what's contained in the Alien Enemies Act.

But the thing about that law was that it only pertained to wartime.

Exactly.

The Alien Enemies Act was the only, um, act in the Alien and Sedition set of four that still lives on today.

There was no built in exploration.

There was no built in expiration date for the Naturalization Act either, but that was quickly ratified.

Um, the Alien Enemies Act only applies during wartime, but essentially gives to the president the same level, same type of unchecked power as did the Alien Act, which is why it should give all of us lawyers especially, but all of us some pause as to its continued legacy in our nation.

And finally, by way of background, what persuaded US leaders, plenty of whom had signed off on the First Amendment, suddenly think it might be essential to national security to quell the free press using the Sedition Act?

Well, I think it probably is very similar to what we're seeing nowadays.

This idea of fear of of the people taking over government, overriding the rule of law.

This idea of importing foreign values that have nothing to do with America.

All of this, I think, propelled lawmakers to believe that.

To protect against fear, to ensure security.

We would need this particular set of statutes, which Thomas Jefferson later called a rod of iron, of tyranny.

Was the Sedition Act also applicable to like private citizens, non journalists who just had bad things to say about what the government was up to?

Yes.

So the Sedition Act targeted all citizens.

Any any person who dared to dissent was encompassed by the act.

However, largely it was deployed against journalists and writers of newspapers, editors of newspapers, and specifically Democratic Republican newspapers, because those were the ones whom the Federalists believe were the largest threat.

It is pretty remarkable that less than a decade after we ratified the Bill of Rights, these core American freedoms that were cherished then are cherished now.

Congress passes these laws that many people view as some of the most shameful repudiation we've ever had of those freedoms.

What kinds of fears convinced the lawmakers of the day that in this specific time.

Time limited for for several of them, we really needed these things.

At the time, the French had reached out to the American government for support, and America was too afraid, threatened to to get involved, so largely abstained from from all involvement.

And there were a lot of protests through the streets, a lot of what the historians and lawmakers call mobs, what nowadays we would probably term as peaceful protests or just resistance against government decision.

And I think the congregation and aggregation of those, um, versions of public speech, of those public gatherings really gave the establish, you know, the wealthy, the ones in power.

The sense that at any moment there.

Hold on.

Power there.

Hold on.

Security could topple.

And so it was this idea of the nation being young, of the government not yet being so robust that I think, seeded the thought that, um, you know, things things could be overthrown in less than a decade, as brought upon by the waves from foreign shores.

So even at the time, there were, uh, disagreements among people in power about all of this, the Democratic-Republicans, whose standard bearer was Thomas Jefferson.

Um, why were they more amenable to the idea of immigrants from France or from anywhere else?

Well, they were, I think, from inception, um, the party of the people, they, um, got received their power and their, um, uh, Votes from the masses, and because there were such notable numbers of immigrants from European shores, um, so, so many from from the French Property Isles, as well as France itself, um, from Great Britain and its territories that, um, you know, I want to be skeptical of all politicians.

So I don't want to inscribe only good intentions to the Democratic publicans as well.

I think both parties at the time, the two party system was not yet entrenched.

So I think there was great motivation from the Democratic Republicans to also establish itself as the main adversary or alternative option to the Federalists, and taking the opposing stance to the reigning government made great sense for the political goals.

And I'm sure there were certain members in that party who truly believed in the right of the people to revolt and disagree and dissent.

Um, but I think that there was also some impetus for, for power and establishment as well.

Well, to that point about political parties, the actual parties have changed over time in name and also in political orientation.

But how was it that divisions over the Alien and Sedition Acts really helped establish, maybe ironically, a two party system in this country?

Yeah, I think the federalist goal was to establish itself.

And for every action, as we know, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

And the opposite reaction came from the Democratic Republicans.

And now now Democrats who said, well, if we take the opposing stands from those in power, then we can mark ourselves out as as an equal, um, response or responsive party that is, that exists in this country.

And so by, I think, Thomas Jefferson leading the charge by the vocal opposition that was led by the Democratic-Republicans both in Congress and in the newspapers in print, um, mostly through Democratic Republican editors and newspapers.

Ironically, The Federalist established this opposite result of what they had hoped for, which was that not only did they establish that they were one party, but they established that there was a quite powerful alternative to them.

And so there was really no two party system identified.

Historians look back and don't really couch that as being a framing, but certainly many historians have since looked at the trajectory of the Alien and Sedition Acts, and several have pointed out that 1798 and this passage, um, marked the beginning of the two party system gingerly, just as a reminder at the time of the Alien and Sedition Acts, people may be thinking, well, you have Adams as president and Jefferson as vice president, but we didn't choose president and vice president together on a ticket.

So almost by definition, they would have been political adversaries.

Yes.

Yes, absolutely.

That makes sense.

Okay.

And John Adams, president, when the acts came into existence, um, this was when the XYZ affair was making shocked headlines.

It may be something that like really close students of American history recall, but for those who it brings a bell, but they can't remember what happened.

Explain to us exactly what went on there.

Yeah.

So, um, France entered into a war with Great Britain.

France had been America's supporter during America's own revolution not that long ago.

And when it entered the war against the same country that America had asserted its independence against France.

Thought that America would, of course, help.

But George Washington, who was president at the time, was very weary of entering another war.

He wasn't sure of where his own country stood, and he decided to be neutral.

During this time, tensions rose between the US and France, who felt rightly betrayed and abandoned.

And so during this period, which is known as the Quasi-War, is when John Adams took over.

So he inherited a whole bag of international problems.

Um, so in 1797, two years before the acts were passed, he sent some commissary to try to broker peace.

The French foreign minister was not receptive and in fact demanded a bribe before he would even consider engaging in negotiations.

The word about this quickly spread through America at that time.

Internationally, bribes were actually quite common and common knowledge.

In America it was less known, I think.

But as news of that spread through America, American public, fur sized, um, a lot of it just became a known thing and became a issue of public debate.

So this became known as the XYZ affair.

The XYZ refers to each of the um individuals that Adam sent over to try to broker, um, collaboration or peace.

So in the aftermath of that, there was a lot of, um, actually support for Adams's decision to and Washington's decision to abstain from French support, and that gave the Federalists a lot of support and votes that then allowed them to ride into a majority in Congress and control the House.

Well, the House's incentives that passed the acts.

But there were, of course, dissidents, including Thomas Jefferson, Democratic-Republicans, who believed that we should support the French and offer them our arms as they had with us not that long ago.

So that is a brief summary of the XYZ affair.

What sort of campaign did Jefferson mount against the Alien and Sedition Acts using what is now called compact theory?

Oh, yes.

Um, so Thomas Jefferson's, uh, constitutional theory, one that is now recognized in law is this idea that um, states consent to be part of, um, the nation through consent to the Constitution, that there is a compact, uh, between the states and the federal government, and that the federal government therefore cannot simply, um, choose or adopt, uh, federal laws, particularly those that override the Constitution without state consent.

So several states upon this, um, upon Thomas Jefferson's vocal and fiery disagreement with the Alien and Sedition Acts, um wrote their own narratives of their disagreement, the extent of their disagreement, the reasons for their disagreement against the Alien and Sedition Acts.

So if we take this idea of states rights as opposed to federal control, um, it's not so surprising that compact Impact theory was later invoked by states that seceded from the Union during the Civil War.

Right.

Right.

It's interesting that this theory that one with think of first is speaks to the power of the people would later be used to, you know, justify, uh, anti abolition and slavery and the right for states to insist upon, um, continuing the legacy of slavery and segregation.

Um, so, so what one might be tempted to believe is a positive or, um, net gain for the people of America in the context of the Alien and Sedition Act, must be couched in the sense of the greater history of how this constitutional theory has been used over the course of American history.

So where has the Supreme Court landed?

How has it ruled on compact theory as a legally valid idea under the Constitution?

Compact theory has since been repudiated by the Supreme Court that there is no, uh, you know, we are.

We are these United States and that we the people, the people have agreed to the Constitution and not the states as independent entities.

So that is now an outdated, um, theory, but one that I believe has, you know, has has created some, some ripples in history in, in the sense of, you know, the position that anti-abortion states have taken on in their fight against, um, liberation.

So, as you noted, the Sedition Act, the Alien Act, the Naturalization Act, all of those were gone not so long after they were initially enacted.

The Alien Enemies Act, um, not only still in the books, but still being actively invoked in 2025.

Before we get to current times, how is this used during the War of 1812?

War of 1812?

I mean, it's cropped up in every major war, but every president that has, um, you know, felt this need to control foreign nationals.

So during the War of 1812, um, national nationals from the Great Britain and other uh, European allies were required to report their statuses or locations.

Um, it has it has cropped up every time, um, that the president has felt threatened I think by by foreign nationals.

And it's interesting because James Madison was the president during the War of 1812 and during the passage of the Alien and Sedition Act.

James Madison, less publicly than Thomas Jefferson, was nevertheless very vocal against the passage of the acts that he would later use.

Did the alien enemies Act play a role in the establishment of racially exclusive immigration policy in the 19th century?

Yes.

Um, it race is at no point mentioned in the alien enemies act as it's very conveniently phrased as, you know, alien friends or aliens who who pose threats to the safety of America.

But it very quickly opened up this divide between who is considered American and who was not considered American.

And unfortunately, if you are marked by skin color, it's harder to become recognized as American.

And so, um, in 1875, when Congress passed the Page Act, and later on, which I assume we'll get to in the Second World War, um, the roots of the Alien and Sedition Act really gave rise to the sentiment of anti-Asian immigration.

Um, this distrust of Asian nationals and Asian Americans as being loyal to the security of the United States.

Yeah, it was within hours of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that the Alien Enemies Act was invoked in World War Two, was anything besides Japanese ethnicity required for the federal government to declare Japanese Americans subject to this enemy alien declaration and subsequent internment.

No.

And in fact, the government began rounding up Japanese Americans.

Most of the people being rounded up had been born in America, but began rounding up these citizens without even any sort of public declaration of war of intent to use the Alien Enemies Act.

Uh, of course, when asked, they would reference the act, and later Roosevelt would indeed invoke explicitly his powers under the auspices of the act.

But all that was needed was to have traced Japanese heritage or descent, and in some cases, German and Italian heritage.

In fact, even now, many decades, a century after the fact, there has been no evidence of espionage, of sabotage, of treason by those who were in turn for quite, quite some amount of time.

You also make the point in your essay, Chen Julie, that the policy in World War II was justified as a means of protecting American citizens from the, you know, insidious presence of their Japanese American neighbors.

But it was mostly U.S.

citizens who were held without due process because of Japanese ancestry.

Yes, absolutely.

This this long time verbiage of we need to do this to protect you, right?

There was a lot of declaration of we need to protect Americans.

And that's why we are interning these people, these people being also Americans.

The irony of protecting Americans against themselves, um, was an irony that was not explored, not recognized, and the bulk of those in turned over 122,000 were Japanese American.

More than two thirds of that population had been indeed born on American soil.

So that's why I think all of us out, many of us are now, and all of us civil rights litigators are rightly suspicious of when a government, you know, waves a piece of law waves and an executive order decision and says, well, you need this for us to protect you, because who really suffers?

The people being quote unquote protected.

Was there a lot of domestic pushback outside the Japanese and, to a lesser extent, Italian and German communities, to the internment of U.S.

citizens during World War two?

Based on what I have seen, not much and not nearly as much as should have been justified by the protections of the Bill of rights and the Constitution.

In fact, there were a lot of anti-Asian sentiment writ large because of the difficulty of a larger population often have in discerning between Chinese Americans, Korean Americans, Japanese Americans.

Everyone who appeared to be Asian were lumped in together.

And so, you know, it's it's widely known that Chinese and Korean Americans would go around with a tag that said, I'm I'm Chinese, I'm not Japanese.

But even so, the all Asian Americans suffered, um, many risks of being stopped being detained, being threatened with internment, in addition to public harassment on the street.

I mean, I'm living through a world war is nothing, nothing small.

And I think the fears of what was happening abroad was, as with the French Revolution, I think, carried over on onto this land in ways that, um, I think amplify the existing racial prejudices and the, you know, history of segregation and racism that lives in our country's bones, unfortunately.

It it really is fascinating, gingerly, to think about how easily fear gets under our skin, like we have the Constitution, we have the Bill of rights, we have other rights that have been outlined.

Um, but when, you know, when we brave Americans are freaked out enough by something, we have given ourselves all kinds of exceptions to the rules we created for ourselves.

Absolutely.

I think that the, the blueprint for a lot of rhetoric that we're seeing nowadays and the blueprint, I think, for general fascism, however you might define it, is to prey on this very human tendency to fear, fear others fear for the security and safety of ourselves, our families.

It's only natural to want to obtain safety for those we love and our children.

And so I think that that is a human tendency that cannot easily be eliminated and, but can very easily be preyed upon.

I'll tell you who was brave.

Frank Korematsu.

Tell us his story.

Fred Korematsu was a 23 year old man who had been born in California.

He decided that he was not going to be interned.

Most people were very angry about internment.

Most Japanese Americans were very angry, but most of them obliged, complied, believed in the protections of their government, even under internment.

Fred said, no, I don't trust that.

And he decided that he was just not going to go.

So he actually underwent plastic surgery to change his appearance, to take on a fake name, to deny being of Japanese descent.

He was later arrested, but he had, you know, no record.

There was no proof of any source of disloyalty, of espionage, of sabotage.

And he ultimately agreed to have the ACLU use him as a test case before the United States Supreme Court to test the legality of internment in that case has become a very famous piece in American jurisprudence.

Korematsu versus United States.

Um, unfortunately, a piece that has lived in as much infamy as the attack on Pearl Harbor, um, for the reason that the Supreme Court decided that internment was, in fact, legal and constitutional.

There were dissenting justices in that ruling.

What arguments did they put up in opposition?

They, uh, just as Frank Murphy, for instance, said that this was a complete legalization of racism.

So.

So the majority opinion stated that the internment of Japanese Americans met the strict scrutiny test, which is the highest, most stringent test under constitutional law.

The majority said it was narrowly tailored and there was a compelling state interest, and it was not based on race, it was based on national security.

And of course, the dissent skewered that.

The most famous dissent, aside from Justice Murphy's, was Justice Jackson, who said that internment had zero place in law under the Constitution, and he highlighted the dangers of, um, going down this path.

He warned, we may as well say that any military order is constitutional.

We're giving the executive branch.

We're giving the president a blank check because of this, you know, understanding and law that military discretion and judgment goes to the executive branch and judiciary cannot review it.

And so the dissent in that in Korematsu versus United States really warned of what might come from letting such a decision and such a statute live on in our nation at chin, Julie.

How does Kurt Ledecky story play into the way the alien enemies act has been used outside war time?

Ledecky case, which would see the Supreme Court in 1948 and be known as Ledecky versus Watkins, was an interesting expansion from a largely unsympathetic individual.

So Ledecky was a German national and suspected Nazi who had been within the United States after Germany's surrender, and the government decided to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport him without fair hearing after surrender.

So arguably there was no war in place.

Um, and the statute is very clear that it only accords powers during wartime.

Um and Ledecky decided to challenge this on his own.

Su sponte.

Without attorney representation, I suspect the ACLU refused to represent him because of potential Nazi affiliations.

So this guy, you know, goes up against the court on his own.

And the court rejected his argument, saying that, um, you know, depending on how you saw it, the war was still in place, even though there might be a declaration that the war had ended, even though there was surrender.

Um, there is a difference, the court said, between a shooting war and tensions of war.

Um, you know, infrastructure might not be back in place.

Never mind that, um, the United States largely was not impacted infrastructure lead by the ongoing or and recently ended Second World War.

Um, and even more concerning, the majority said that the question of the court invoked the political question doctrine, which is a doctrine that says that judiciary cannot review the discretion of the executive branch of the president's were political discretion where political powers.

Um, this idea of managing politics come into play.

The judiciary could interpret the Constitution, could interpret what the law says.

Again, it said that it applied only during wartime, but the discretion that came from the political question could not be reviewed.

So essentially the decision said, you know, we can't review the the president's powers.

Even if we did review it, It would be fine because of all these reasons that, you know, legally contort into possibly arguing that the war was still continuing.

Um, the decision really expanded the powers of the alien enemies act, pretty much.

Um, many legal scholars believe that the president had expansive discretion.

Um, as as expansive as the president would have had under the Alien Act.

Had it survived.

Uh, John Adams's term.

So let's jump on the timeline to the 21st century.

You describe the current moment as the most expansive use ever of the alien enemies act.

How so?

When?

When Trump took over in March 2025.

Uh.

Or when Trump took over, he took less than two months.

And in 20th March 2025, he decided to use the Alien Enemies Act to begin deporting individuals who were allegedly involved in a gang based in Venezuela.

Notably, there was no declaration of war, had been no identifiable war with Venezuela in the recent history or in the imminent future, in no part of the history of the act.

The history of the nation have we seen these broad presidential powers deployed in such a scenario.

Every president has attached their executive executive power to either an ongoing act, an ongoing war, imminent war, or the threat of war at the very least, or recently concluded war.

Um, so this was an extreme step in the history of the acts, one that, um, if one studies The history of the Supreme Court decisions under the Alien Sedition Acts.

If one studies the lineage and where they were pointing, one might have predicted, but it nevertheless was a quite bold decision for the Trump administration to open its second term with reading the statute in such a way.

So President Trump has talked about an invasion of criminal aliens as being, what, on par with some kind of coordinated military operation by a foreign power.

When President Trump issued the proclamation, um, asserting this, you know, invasion by this gang that was coordinated by the foreign government, he had already rounded up many people that he wanted to be detained.

He then justified the use of that power with this alleged alleged invasion, which had no proof really in in current affairs and objective data.

But yes, that was the attachment that he used to the wartime provision in the statute.

One that many would argue finds no fact in reality.

Is that idea of an invasion defined specifically in U.S.

law?

Like what puts an uptick of unauthorized immigration in the same category as, like an actual incursion by foreign troops?

There is no such connection except that one might say the Alien Act and the Alien Enemies Act was possibly written intentionally vague right to say threat to the security of the United States by foreign nationals, by alien enemies.

That can be interpreted many ways.

We know from the then history, the current affairs then, that that was it was not intended to be deployed against, um in a time where there were no actual wars, no actual alien enemies in the context of war.

Um, but in modern day, I suppose, if you were to have a very loose reading of the words used in the statue, you could make that argument, which Trump administration lawyers indeed did before the Supreme Court.

Plenty of Americans might object to the ongoing use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants without due process.

What evidence is there that U.S.

citizens have been caught up in these detentions and deportations?

There is ample evidence that U.S.

citizens have been targeted based on, you know, largely race, their appearance and rounded up and who goes around, you know, carrying their passport, their birth certificate.

Not many of us, not many people that I know.

And so if you are just proceeding by racial profiling, which there is evidence of.

If you look a certain way, you're more likely to be rounded up and detained and potentially threatened with deportation from the very country.

Maybe the only country you're affiliated with, the only country you've ever lived in.

And we've seen, um, several, uh, instances of us citizens, citizens, individuals born here.

Not that it should matter.

Citizenship is citizenship, but citizens being held into Ice detention without due process for untold months, weeks before they're able to face a tribunal and say, look, I was I was properly documented.

I'm not supposed to be here.

What do we know about what happened with Kilmore, Abrego, Garcia, Kilmore, um, Armando Abrego Garcia is the first um and I believe the only individual that the government has come out and just admitted was a wrongly deported.

He was not in any way affiliated with Venezuela or this gang that the Trump administration has been fixated with.

Um, shortly after he was sent off on the plane and before the Supreme Court, the Trump administration lawyer and lawyers admitted that he was not supposed to be part of that group of detainees.

Um, he was nevertheless, uh, you know, detained in a Venezuelan facility for, I believe, months before his return was, um, finally secured and the the wrongs righted to the extent that it can be righted after the fact.

My understanding is that the federal government has said that once these folks are deported, and especially if they are placed in these, you know, foreign prisons, that there's no the U.S.

has no power, then to get them back.

Is that true?

The argument is that, um, they have no jurisdiction over foreign territories.

And in a sense, that is true legally.

Um, you know, these individuals are in a foreign, uh, territory under a different government.

But if it was our government's decision, our government's action or negligence or willful, um, willful abuse of power that those individuals ended up there.

There is some similar countervailing argument that there is a right of those individuals, and certainly a duty of the government that, um, made those mistakes to secure them, to bring them to safety.

I mean, after all, aren't we preoccupied with the safety of Americans, of the security of Americans?

Where does that stand once the government is the one who is jeopardized that safety?

Um, what have the court said about the entitlement of people who are not citizens of the United States to Fifth Amendment protections?

Um, in the specific ramifications of Trump's actions.

It has gone back and forth.

There generally is the sense that all peoples on United States territory are due due process.

However, where of course there is a foreign war where there is a threat to national security that has largely been exempted.

That protection no longer holds.

Um, and this idea that presidential actions during such time of ensure national security is not subject to judicial review is, I believe, one of the most dangerous facets of that that due process governs.

But in certain times it doesn't.

And even when it might, the courts cannot do anything about it, creates a very dangerous and quite large loophole in the in the rights, in the Bill of rights and our Constitution and what we believe are inalienable.

Um, all of that goes kind of out the window.

If the courts say, well, my hands are tied.

The president does what he wants.

It seems like everybody should worry about everybody else just being taken care of.

But there might be the sense people have that like, well, these things will never happen to me.

What is your sense about, you know, if we're not protecting Fifth Amendment rights of everyone, that any one of us living in the United States could be vulnerable to these kinds of abuses.

Yeah.

Well, there's there is that famous quote.

Right.

First they came for this population.

I didn't speak up first, and then they came for this.

And finally there was me and there was no one to speak of for me.

And that is really what the history of the Alien and Sedition Acts depict.

Right.

First it becomes fairly narrow, fairly cabin.

It bears remarking that the initial alien act, which was incredibly broad, was never actually deployed because what the government wanted to go after where the Democratic-Republicans and the journalists who supported them.

But look at the history that it has etched in its trail.

No one spoke up against repealing all of the acts in entirety, and it has since become broader and broader, expanding from British subjects to Asian Americans.

And now, you know, any any individuals, citizen or not, may be part of the round up entertainment that the Trump administration is using to, I would argue, not secure the safety of the nation, but to centralize its power.

John Adams eventually came to regret the Alien and Sedition Acts.

What did he write about?

Why he changed his thinking on these?

Uh, he came out later and said that I regret not the repeal of the acts, because they were never favorites with me.

Uh, very quickly after the acts were passed.

Um, the Democratic-Republicans use the fervor, the fight against dissent to um, collect votes, get popular support.

And they rode that wave into the 1800 election, which is just two years after enactment.

Thomas Jefferson became president.

And, um, saw through a lot of what he promised to to repeal the Naturalization Act, to, to, to right some of the wrongs that had been passed under the Federalists power.

What immediate future do you foresee for the use of the alien enemies act in this country?

Well, um, you know, I it's easy to say I wish that it would be repealed, but that is a long, long journey.

I think that that act this act is is very open ground, fertile ground and terrain for the now president to Expand what it means to have political question discretion, to have to secure, um, safety and national security.

But, you know, having looked at the history of these acts very closely, I will say that in the long run, it may not be tomorrow, may not be next month.

But in the long run, the people have prevailed so long as they have continued to speak.

Many editors, journalists were prosecuted and thrown into prison for writing disagreement about government, about the president, and those individuals eventually prevailed.

They in fact became more successful because they refused to stop speaking, to stop writing from prison, to continue to use their trials as a platform for why the government was abusing its power.

And we're seeing now with the people of the United States continuing to protest, continue to speak up.

Journalists continuing to fact check and call out abuses of power.

I think that as long as we do that, no matter how dismal the current day, no matter how dismal some of the history might be, we can begin to write some of the wrongs.

The US government has since come out and formally apologize for Japanese internment.

That does not undo the trauma and the pains that the Japanese Americans endured that does not endure, undo the erosion of constitutional rights that has been written into our jurisprudence, although Korematsu has been explicitly overruled.

But it does something, I think, to point us in the right direction, that constitutional protections in writing might be one thing, and they might seem robust, but the most robust, the biggest and strongest guards of democracy, of our constitution, of our rights are us, we the people.

Right?

And I go back to this center of constitutional law, which is that it's not the states who entered into a compact with the federal government is we the people.

We the people agreed to give up certain freedoms in exchange for the protection of government.

But that agreement only holds as long as the government continues to care for and be in service of We the People.

And once they have abrogated that end of the bargain, we the People have the right to stand up, to speak and to reject their governance if if need be.

Qian Julie, it's been a real pleasure.

Thank you for making time to talk.

Thank you so much, Krys.

Thank is distributed by the Public Radio Exchange.

Find us on, Instagram, anywhere you get podcasts or at think again, I'm Krys Boyd.

Thanks for listening.

Have a great day.