Federal Appeals Court Rules that Illegal Immigrants Do Not Have the Right To Bear Arms
by Emmitt Barry, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – A federal appeals court in New Orleans has determined that illegal immigrants are not entitled to Second Amendment rights to bear arms. This ruling came after a Mexican man, convicted of illegally possessing a handgun, challenged the constitutionality of the ban.
On Tuesday, a three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that federal laws prohibiting illegal immigrants from owning firearms are lawful, and that Second Amendment rights do not extend to individuals who have entered the country illegally.
The decision was issued in the case of Jose Paz Medina-Cantu, who was arrested by Border Patrol agents in Texas in 2022. Medina-Cantu was charged with unlawful possession of a handgun and re-entering the country illegally after a previous deportation.
“The Second Amendment protects the right of ‘the people’ to keep and bear arms. Our court has held that the term ‘the people’ under the Second Amendment does not include illegal aliens,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, a conservative appointed by Republican President Trump, in a concurring opinion.
He added, “As to common sense, an illegal alien does not become ‘part of a national community’ by unlawfully entering it, any more than a thief becomes an owner of property by stealing it.”
“The Court has repeatedly explained that ‘an alien… does not become one of the people to whom these things are secured by our Constitution by an attempt to enter forbidden by law’… But that’s, of course, the very definition of an illegal alien – one who ‘attempts to enter’ our country in a manner ‘forbidden by law.’”
“So illegal aliens are not part of ‘the people’ entitled to the protections of the Second Amendment.”
Ho also noted the irony in an illegal alien appealing to the Constitution, stating, “And ‘the power to exclude [aliens from the United States] has been determined to exist’ under our Constitution.
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