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Daniela Vargas speaks at news conference on March 1 about her deportation fears.

ABC News

Last week, officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 22-year-old Dreamer Daniela Vargas, a Mississippi resident who has been living in the United States since she was 7. But for a temporary lapse in her status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration policy, Vargas has been everything America says it wants in an immigrant: well-educated, ambitious, law-abiding, and patriotic. It should surprise nobody that she is about to be deported.

Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate, and hosts the podcast Amicus.

Vargas was taken into ICE custody just moments after she publicly criticized the Trump administrations immigration raids, a move that makes it appear as if she was swept up by the immigration agency on account of what she said to the press. ICE agents have confirmed that Vargas was taken into custody during a targeted immigration enforcement action. One may well wonder what was being targeted in that action, if not her speech. In part because her arrest seemed so deliberately linked to her decision to speak out, her lawyers, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and other civil rights groups filed a petition in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on Monday to stop her deportation. Her attorneys are claiming that Vargas arrest amounts to retaliation against someone exercising her First Amendment rights.

The petition explains that Vargas graduated high school in 2013 with honors and that she has attended East Central Community College and the University of Southern Mississippi, where she has studied to be a math teacher. In addition to her pending DACA renewal, she also has a petition pending for a U nonimmigrant visa, which is set aside for victims of certain crimes who have suffered mental or physical abuse and are helpful to law enforcement or government officials in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activity.

Vargas was at home in February when her brother and father were taken into ICE custody. Having lost her DACA status last Novemberher attorneys say she could not afford the $495 renewal fee at the timeVargas had reapplied last month. When ICE agents raided Vargas home on Feb. 15, they led her father and brother away in handcuffs. According to her petition, Vargas told the agents she had been granted DACA status. She then went into her house, locked the door, and hid in a closet. The ICE agents returned with a search warrant. The petition alleges they broke down the front door and that an agent pointed a gun at Vargas when she emerged from the closet. Before they left the house, Vargas was allegedly told that they knew her DACA had lapsed, but that they were giving her a hall pass. Vargas then left the house and spoke to local media , which had gathered outside during the raid.

Vargas hall pass apparently expired a few weeks later. On March 1, she spoke at a press conference, describing the raid on her home and the need for a pathway to citizenship. Moments later, she was pulled out of her friends car by ICE agents and arrested. According to her petition, one of the ICE agents who had been at the raid at her home said, Remember me? You know who we are; you know why were here, and youre under arrest for being an illegal immigrant. Vargas has been in an ICE detention facility ever since. Her petition concludes that she is now at imminent risk of deportation to Argentinaa country she left in 2001 at age seven, that she scarcely knows, and to which she fears returning.

Nobody knows whether DACA is at risk under the Trump regime.

ICE originally stated that Vargas case would be heard before an immigration judge. The Department of Homeland Security has apparently gone back on its word; it is now taking the position that Vargas is not entitled to contest her deportation as she entered this country in 2001 through the Visa Waiver Program. The statute establishing the VWP requires any noncitizen entering the U.S. to waive his or her right to contest, other than on the basis of an application for asylum, any action for removal of the alien. Her lawyers argue that detaining and deporting Vargas without a hearing violates her Fifth Amendment due process rights, because at age 7 she could not have knowingly and voluntarily waived her right to seek a hearing to contest deportation.

Vargas speech claims have broad implications not just for DACA recipients but for whistleblowers and immigration activists around the country. Her petition cites cases from the Fourth and Ninth Circuits, holding that everyone in the United States, including noncitizens, enjoys the right to peaceful expression of views through public demonstration. Vargas lawyers argue that the First Amendment prevents law enforcement officials from retaliating against speakers by targeting, detaining, arresting, and/or seeking to deport an individual engaging in protected speech where the officials actions caused [the speaker] to suffer an injury that would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to engage in that activity and when those officials were substantially motivated against the plaintiffs exercise of constitutionally protected conduct.

There can be no dispute that Vargas remarks about the ICE raid on her family home represent the kind of core political speech the First Amendment is designed to protect. Its also beyond dispute that Vargas had been permitted to stay in the country only days before and that the speech seems to have triggered a change in ICE policy. The Trump immigration effort, we were told, was supposed to consist of stepped-up deportations of criminalsnot lawful political speakers. Vargas did nothing to warrant deportation without due process.

The other problem, as her lawyers contend, is that nobody knows whether DACA is at risk under the new regime. DACA has afforded protections to 750,000 immigrants since the Obama administration launched it in 2012. In the weeks since his inauguration, Trump has given wildly conflicting messages about whether it will continue to be in effect. If Vargas is now at risk because of a brief technicality around her Dreamer status, its hardly clear that DACA still has real force. And if Dreamers can be removed for little more than giving a political speech, they are now as much at risk as other noncriminals in Trumps America.

The casual cruelty of Trumps war on lawful immigrants depends on the complicity of citizens, and the chilling of both protest and media watchdogging. In addition to our collective vigilance, the solution for the cruelty around the action against Daniela Vargas will be the same as the solution to Trumps original, vicious travel ban: lawyers. Lots of them. The Southern Poverty Law Center announced Tuesday that its launching a new project to ensure that detained immigrants will have access to free lawyers. We are going to need them.

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Daniela Vargas embodies the casual cruelty of Trump's war on ... - Slate Magazine

The Fifth Amendment grants the federal government the right to exercise its power of eminent domain the power to take private property for public use by a state, municipality, private person or corporation authorized to exercise functions of public character, following the payment of just compensation to the owner of that property.

State Rep. DeWayne Burns, R-Cleburne, filed House Bill 2684 on Thursday, which aims to level the playing field for property owners when they face off with government entities and corporations with infinitely greater resources.

Burns said it was his personal experience with eminent domain that prompted him to file the bill.

I know first hand the burden that the eminent domain process places on landowners, he said. You climb off a tractor and there is a person there telling you they are there to negotiate a fair price for land you didnt want to sell and at the end of the day if you dont want to sell it, it will be taken from you.

Burns said his family owns property in the southwest part of Johnson County and several years ago when the Barnett shale was really active, he and many other landowners in the area found themselves in negotiations for eminent domain.

We had multiple pipeline companies that were wanting to come across our property, he said. Some of the companies were easy to deal with and some were not. Sometimes we felt threatened by them. I felt like landowners at the time had no information and nowhere to turn and were dealing from a position of not knowing what is going on.

That is why I am fighting to ensure property owners are in the best possible position when faced with the taking of their property. In Texas, private property rights are a sacred principle, and I believe this legislation will help preserve that right without adversely affecting the businesses that are helping to grow our economy.

Malachi Solomon Tomlinson posted on the Times-Review Facebook page that he is in favor of the proposed bill.

In theory, Burns plan would give people more power over their own property against corporations, he said. Sad that we had to get to this point to make a bill when the constitution and the clause already give those rights. But what about when the state turns around and finds loopholes to seize land or work on it like they often do highways or roads? Still powerless.

Jennifer Hamblin said she thinks HB 2684 might not be effective.

We never truly own [our property] anyway even after the loan is paid off you still pay taxes, she said. You dont pay taxes they take your property either way. The government will take it like they do everything else. Plus they only give you barely what it is worth which if you try to find the same amount of property it costs double what you already had. Not very fair.

Burns said Texas is a growing state with a strong appetite for new development which has put a target on Texas property, leaving landowners searching for a fair offer and process in eminent domain cases.

The new legislation will provide for the reimbursement of landowner expenses if they are sued by a condemner and are ultimately awarded significantly more than the final offer, he said, It will also spell out the use and restriction details required within a condemners bona fide offer to ensure the entity will properly use and maintain the property.

Burns legislation was met with approval from individuals and organization who advocate on behalf of property owners across Texas.

This new legislation is a tremendous step toward fixing a faulty process that places landowners at a huge disadvantage when navigating the condemnation process, said Richard Thorpe, president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. We are grateful to have strong allies like Burns who are committed to defending the rights of private landowners and preserving our future.

HB 2684 will level the playing field

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Burns files bill to protect property owners - Cleburne Times-Review

The year is 2019. The government sends in a SWAT team to seize any corporate property it wants without the due process or just compensation required by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. The government also has the power to swipe bank assets, raid newspaper offices without warrants or just cause, and even censor any news published by a media corporation. No, its not the plot of a newly unearthed Orwell novel. These tactics, and more, would be legal under an amendment to the U.S. Constitution just introduced by Montana Sen. Jon Tester.

Testers amendment aims to strip rights from corporate entities. His amendment would provide that (1) The rights enumerated in this Constitution and other rights retained by the people shall be the rights of natural persons; (2) As used in this Constitution, the terms people, person, and citizen shall not include a corporation, a limited liability company, or any other corporate entity established by the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state.

Senator Tester justifies his proposal by arguing that a corporation doesnt hop on the combine to try and get harvest done. Well.

Seven years after Citizens United, the whole corporations arent people and therefore shouldnt have rights bit is getting pretty tiresome. Certainly, our elected officials should be held to a higher standard of debate.

Yes, its true that if youve never thought about it, the idea that corporations are people seems absurd on its face. Corporations are not people, of course. But, for many purposes, it makes perfect sense that the law treats them as such. For example, if the law did not treat corporations as people, they couldnt be sued.

The bigger point, though, is that corporations have rights because people have rights, and people form and own corporations. This is a principle as old as the American Republic, re-emphasized by the Supreme Court as early as 1819 in Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward. A corporation, the Court noted, is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. But that didnt mean that people gave up their rights when they formed a corporation. Rather, the decision emphasized that when people join together to accomplish things, they usually need some form of organization, and shouldnt have to sacrifice their rights just because they organize. Individuals, wrote the Court, find it impossible to effect their design securely and certainly without an incorporating act. Corporate rights are the rights people have when they act together.

Oddly enough, in the momentous Citizens United decision that prompts Testers proposal, not even the Courts dissenters ever mentioned the issue of corporate personhood. Why? Because they all understood that corporate personhood is a longstanding doctrine that is not controversial in law, and was not what the case was about.

So lets think about Testers reasoning. There are over 29,000 farms and ranches in Montana. Many of these are incorporated. And indeed, around the country a great many, perhaps most, family farms are incorporated. So in a sense, when your local family farmer gets to work, it is indeed a corporation who hops on that combine. In fact, Testers family farm is incorporated it is T-Bone Farms, Inc. Does Tester think it should be illegal for him to post a political sign on his farms property?

Under Testers proposed constitutional amendment, the government could deprive him of a right to a jury trial any time a lawsuit involved his farm. The government could simply take his land, without due process, for any reason, and without compensation, all in violation of the takings clause. All this because, by incorporating his farm, he would give up his constitutional rights.

Constitutional amendments, such as that offered by Tester, will not pass in the next few years but they indicate the general hostility to free speech that many senators have, and their willingness to silence speakers they dont like. They also show the willingness to advocate rash and dangerous proposals to accomplish that end. In the long term, that should concern us all.

Brad Smith is the chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics and the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.

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ONLINE-ONLY OPINION: Tester's assault on corporate rights is an assault on people's rights - The Missoulian

The police cannot force you to tell them the passcode for your phone. Forcing you to turn over or type in your passcode violates the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incriminationthe privilege that allows people to plead the Fifth to avoid handing the government evidence it could use against them. And if you have a phone thats encrypted by default (which we hope you do), forcing you to type in your passcode to unlock the device means forcing you to decrypt your phone, too. That forced translationof unintelligible information to intelligiblealso violates the Fifth Amendment.

But theres a problem: not all law enforcement officers have received the memo. In one particularly egregious case, military investigators forced the defendant, Sergeant Edward J. Mitchell, to unlock and decrypt his iPhone 6 after he asked for a lawyer. Not only was the investigators continued interrogation of Sgt. Mitchell without a lawyer a clear violation of U.S. Supreme Court precedent, but compelling him to unlock and decrypt his phone also violated the Fifth Amendment. The case is currently on appeal to a federal military appeals court, and we filed an amicus brief with the court explaining why.

The Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination protects testimonial communications. Testimonial communications are those that require a person to use the contents of his own mind to communicate some fact. Testimonial communications dont have to be verbal; the key is that the information conveyed must come from the suspects own mind. As we explain in our brief, compelled passcode-based decryption is inherently testimonialand thus always prohibited by the Fifth Amendmentfor two reasons.

First, the compelled entry of a memorized passcode forces a person to reveal the contents of their mind to investigatorscontents that are absolutely privileged by the Fifth Amendment. As far as the Fifth Amendment is concerned, theres no difference between forcing a person to type their passcode directly into their phone and forcing them to say it out loud to an investigator. The trial judge in this case understood that and found that typing in a passcode was a testimonial act. So just by forcing the defendant to unlock his phone, the investigators violated his Fifth Amendment right.

Second, the process of decryption itself is testimonial because it involves translating unintelligible, encrypted evidence into a form that can be used and understood by investigatorsagain relying on the contents of the suspects mind.

Encryption transforms plain, understandable information into unreadable letters, numbers, or symbols using a fixed formula or process. When information is encrypted on a phone, computer, or other electronic device, it exists only in its scrambled format. If Sgt. Mitchells phone had merely been locked but not also encrypted, had the officers broken into the phone, they would have been able to access and understand the information stored on the phone. But since the phone was encrypted, if they had tried to break into the phone, they would have found only scrambled, encrypted data; they wouldnt have been able to understand it. The officers needed Sgt. Mitchell, and his unique knowledge, to translate the information on the phone into its unscrambled, intelligible state for them to be able to use it against him. In other words, they were seeking transformation and explanation of data by an accused of the very data they sought to incriminate him with. This thus violated the Fifth Amendment for a second and independent reasonbecause of the nature of compelled decryption.

Oral argument in this case is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. on April 4, 2017 at the University of Notre Dame Law School in Indiana, as part of the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces student outreach program. We hope the court holds that, because of the very nature of decryption, compelled passcode-based decryption hits at the heart of the Fifth Amendments privilege against self-incrimination.

Thanks to the American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of the District of Columbia for joining our brief.

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EFF to Court: Forcing Someone to Unlock and Decrypt Their Phone Violates the Constitution - EFF

The Telegraph

Man's murder conviction, life sentence upheld on appeal The Telegraph Dinkins also challenged his conviction on the grounds that Lowe, who invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, could have given some useful testimony without incriminating himself. Dinkins' allegation of error, however, is not ...

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Man's murder conviction, life sentence upheld on appeal - The Telegraph