Expert: Rights of Non-Citizens Subject to Trump Travel Ban on a Spectrum

NPR, Feb. 8, 2017 - "What rights do noncitizens have under the U.S. Constitution? As he wrapped up his initial remarks, August Flentje, special counsel to the assistant attorney general, said that in some cases, noncitizens have "no rights" that the state of Washington could try to protect. Cornell University Law School professor Stephen Yale-Loehr says that's basically true. He explains that the constitutional rights of noncitizens exist on a sort of spectrum. "At one end of the spectrum someone who's never been to the United States, even for visiting Disney World, really has no rights," he tells NPR. "On the other end of the spectrum would be somebody who's been given a green card ... they have a lot of constitutional rights." But it's more complicated than that. It matters where someone is. Someone in the U.S. — even illegally — has constitutional rights, such as the right to due process and the freedoms under the First Amendment, Yale-Loehr says. Even people who aren't in the U.S. and never have been might have ties to a U.S. resident or citizen who has rights of his own — as the state of Washington pointed out in its arguments."