The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap Highlight

But according to a recent federal court decision called INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, in cases involving immigrants, a Fourth Amendment violation must be “egregious” for evidence to be thrown out. Moreover, thanks to a more recent case called Gutierrez-Berdin v. Eric Holder, even “very minor physical abuse coupled with aggressive questioning” does not rise to the level of an egregious Fourth Amendment violation. The government’s rationale here is beautiful in its simplicity. American criminals have constitutional rights not because they are natural-born Americans but precisely because they are criminals. Deportations, however, are not part of the criminal justice system. “Removal proceedings,” wrote the circuit judge in the Gutierrez-Berdin case, “are civil, not criminal, and the exclusionary rule does not generally apply to them.”