NASHUA, NH – This week, Ink Link News had an opportunity to speak with U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan about her exchange with Homeland Security Department Director Kristi Noem during the May 20 Senate committee hearing.
During the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Hassan questioned Director Noem about preserving the fundamental constitutional protection of Habeas Corpus. Habeas Corpus is a legal concept that predated the Magna Carta and is a central principle of our legal system.
Here is their exchange:
The senator asked, “Secretary Noem, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff said that the Trump administration is looking at suspending habeas corpus. I want to clarify your position because it is important to get this right. What is habeas corpus?”
Director Noem replied, “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to …”
Senator Hassan responded, “That is incorrect.”
This is how Senator Hassan described the exchange to the Ink Link.
“I went to that Homeland Security hearing with a series of questions for Secretary Noem, but because in the previous week she had expressed some confusion about habeas corpus, I thought it was really important for the leader of the agency that is responsible for detaining people who are in the country unlawfully and, if necessary, eventually deporting them, I thought it was really important to get her understanding of the rights of people in the United States of America on the record.”
“And the fact, I was hoping that she actually would be able to respond accurately to the question of what habeas corpus is and I was anticipating that we would have perhaps a difference of opinion about how easy it is for a president to decide to suspend it, what kind of process they have to do. And instead, I found that she was giving me a definition that was completely inverted.”
“Habeas corpus, of course, is the right that says if the government’s gonna detain you, it has to say publicly why it’s detaining you, which, of course, gives people a reason, a tool for challenging the detention. And that’s an essential difference between us and a police state, where in a police state, people can just be picked up off the street and disappear, and their family never finds out what happens to them. And sadly, there are examples of that in modern history as well as long ago history.”
“When we see people in Secretary Noem’s department showing up and whisking people away in cars with masks on their faces, it raises the issue of whether that department understands what its legal obligations are as Americans. And I just thought it was really important. I was truly shocked by her answer.”
“I was, though, satisfied that she said she would follow court orders if she was ordered to release somebody or to bring them back to the country.”
The full video of their hearing exchange is below.