Folks are being deported now without going in front of a judge. Let's stipulate without reservation that the US has the right to deport them expeditiously. Let'

Folks are being deported now without going in front of a judge. Let's stipulate without reservation that the US has the right to deport them expeditiously. Let's buy everything the administration says about how bad these folks are and how important it is to remove them immediately. However, it is still important for these folks to go in front of a judge because the government has a responsibility to show evidence that the people they plan to deport are who they say they are, that this collection of atoms is the person named X. If Person X says they should not be deported because they are a citizen, a court is the proper place to adjudicate that. Let Person X bring purported proof of citizenship, let the court assess the validity of such proof. ICE and other law enforcement agents are not equipped to do any of this in a neutral fashion. A key objection right now is that we are skipping this long-established legal process because it is too slow to serve political ends. (It is slow in part because we don't care enough to spend more money to make it faster.) Without bringing folks before a judge, all of this gets short-circuited. The inevitable result of skipping judicial adjudication at scale will be that US citizens will end up in foreign prisons with their only recourse being lucky enough to have people in the US going to extreme lengths to locate them and find a sympathetic court. This is quite literally the entire point of habeas corpus, the reason why it has been part of English legal tradition for nearly 1000 years (US inherited this via English Common Law). It's not going to end well that an allegation can have someone rapidly deported, without that person having the chance to e.g. show their proof of citizenship. Edit: Most people do not carry proof of citizenship on their person. Most US driver's licenses, even REAL IDs, do not display citizenship status. For example, Georgia does not accept REAL IDs issued by Georgia as proof of citizenship. Further, a person walking on the street (or in their home) may not even be carrying their ID. We have judicial processes because courtrooms are neater than the messy processes that occur in the field.