News: Customs raids spur training on rights

Today the Boston Globe did an extensive story on 'know your rights' trainings done for years by the ACLU and other groups for non-citizens.

It's ironic that 'know your rights' trainings by the ACLU and other groups have drawn condemnation from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. What's really an outrage is their suggestion that constitutional rights should be suppressed.

An open and free society functions best when people are aware of their legal and constitutional rights. Our Constitution assumes that people are aware of their rights and may exercise them.

It’s true that non-citizens don’t have all the same rights as citizens. But the constitution guarantees that everyone inside our borders, not just US citizens, have basic rights, including the right to be free from unreasonable searches, the right not to self incriminate, the right not to let officers into their homes without a warrant, the right to due process, and the right to contact an attorney for assistance.

If law enforcement has absolute power to bypass these constitutional protections just because they happen to be looking for undocumented immigrants, then in the end, no US citizen is safe from a loud knock on the door in the middle of the night either.