“THE RIGHT TO SAY GOODBYE”??

[Geee]

Powerline

Did you know that you have a fundamental constitutional right to say goodbye? You do according to Federal District Court Judge Katherine B. Forrest (an Obama appointee). I guess that right was another one of those rights hiding in the emanations and penumbras of the 14th Amendment, or something.

On Monday Judge Forrest ordered the release from custody Ravidath Ragbir, an alien who ICE had detained and was preparing to deport. Judge Forrest twice notes that the government was in complete conformity with statutory law: “The Court in fact agrees with the Government that the statutory scheme—when one picks the path through the thicket in the corn maze—allows them to do what was done here.” And: “The Court agrees that the statutory scheme governing petitioner’s status is properly read to allow for his removal without further right of contest.”

This should be the end of the matter then, shouldn’t it?

Not to Judge Forrest, who offers us this flourish of “legal reasoning”:
There is, and ought to be in this great country, the freedom to say goodbye. That is, the freedom to hug one’s spouse and children, the freedom to organize the myriad of human affairs that collect over time. It ought to be—and it has never before been—that those who have lived without incident in this country for years are subject to treatment we associate with regimes we revile as unjust [you mean like the Obama Administration arresting and jailing an obscure video producer after Benghazi??], regimes where those who have lived long in a country may be taken without notice from streets, home and work. And sent away.