By CHRIS POWELL
Is Kevin Moreno’s return to Connecticut a triumph of justice and due process of law?
Advocates of open borders think so. They celebrated with him at a rally in Meriden on Christmas Eve, hours before his 17th birthday, along with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, city officials, religious leaders, and others who supported efforts to get the teenager released from an immigration detention shelter for minors in Texas after being held in government custody for six months.
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Speaking in Spanish translated by one of his lawyers, Kevin said: “It’s very hard to go through this process, and I’ve seen a lot of people who have done badly because of it. … We’re all human and we shouldn’t be treated like this.”
So how should someone in Kevin’s circumstances be treated?
Apparently Kevin and his father entered the United States illegally from Mexico in February 2024, claiming to be fleeing gang violence in their homeland, Ecuador. They were briefly held by the Border Patrol and then, under the Biden administration’s open borders policy, given a summons to a hearing in immigration court in Hartford eight months hence, and released. But like most illegal immigrants so summoned, they skipped their hearing.
Kevin’s father says someone impersonating an immigration lawyer told him their problem had been resolved and they needn’t go to court. But when they failed to appear, the judge ordered them removed, but they were not immediately found.
Eventually Kevin and his father did make contact with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Hartford and appeared there in June for what they thought would be a routine check. Instead they were arrested and sent to a detention center in Texas, with Kevin then transferred to the shelter for minors and his father returned to Ecuador.
Recently Kevin’s supporters persuaded an immigration judge in Hartford to vacate the order for his removal and persuaded a federal magistrate in Texas to order ICE to attend a hearing on Kevin’s case. Instead ICE released him to his aunt in Connecticut, to whom a probate court had awarded custody. Kevin now may qualify for a program for minors that may give him permanent residency.
ICE sometimes disregards due process but this isn’t one of those cases. The violations of due process here are those of Kevin and his father.
They entered the country illegally, confident in the Biden administration’s own disregard of due process, its decision not to enforce immigration law at the border but to admit millions of foreigners without any vetting, even though most would never attend the immigration hearings to which they were summoned. Indeed, Kevin and his father also skipped their hearing.
Even if their stories about violence in Ecuador and the fake immigration lawyer are true, they don’t constitute exemptions from the law, which Kevin and his father set out to break.
By all accounts Kevin is a great young man who has made many friends during his two years living illegally in Meriden. But that doesn’t cancel immigration law either. (Kevin graduated from high school in Meriden a year early not just because of school credits he earned in Ecuador that Meriden’s school system accepted but also because Meriden provides education in both English and Spanish, apparently unconvinced that all Americans should be able to speak English.)
Of course permanent residency — legal or just de-facto, living in limbo — is the objective of nearly everyone who enters the United States illegally. Apart from his having made influential friends, has Kevin done anything to deserve both permanent residency and a place in line superior to the millions of others who entered illegally and are living without influential friends? Where’s the due process in that?
Maybe the due process question does not concern Kevin’s friends because, as advocates of open borders, they would waive ordinary review procedures for everyone coming across the border, not just Kevin. That is, they would abolish due process, immigration law, and, along with them, the country itself.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 