Maybe, but I think they meant "treat it like a civil matter while giving civil-matter protections". Be consistent. The current criminal treatment with civil protections is inconsistent. Pick a lane.
Deportation is a civil treatment. It's one of the actions the government can use when you violate civil immigration laws:
The Court added that an alien being removed by the government is not being “deprived of life, liberty, or property” and that “the provisions of the Constitution securing the right to trial by jury and prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and cruel and unusual punishments [therefore] have no application. That is also why federal immigration officers do not need a warrant issued by a judge before arresting and detaining aliens and why aliens are not entitled to be advised of their Miranda rights or to the assistance of a government-appointed lawyer during their deportation proceedings.
It's also just not true that they're giving the much-lower civil protections either. Garcia didn't get a jury despite the Seventh Amendment guaranteeing one in common law (for cases exceeding a challenge of $20, which we've been purposively interpreting for decades)
Garcia doesn't get the protections afforded by the Seventh Amendment:
Deportation is a civil treatment. It's one of the actions the government can use when you violate civil immigration laws:
The Court added that an alien being removed by the government is not being “deprived of life, liberty, or property” and that “the provisions of the Constitution securing the right to trial by jury and prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and cruel and unusual punishments [therefore] have no application. That is also why federal immigration officers do not need a warrant issued by a judge before arresting and detaining aliens and why aliens are not entitled to be advised of their Miranda rights or to the assistance of a government-appointed lawyer during their deportation proceedings.
>"Deportation is a civil treatment. It's one of the actions the government can use when you violate civil immigration laws"
This is true, good catch.
However, one of the issues with this - without guaranteeing proper due process in a civil immigration matter - is that the lack of right to due process or deliberation can make it harder for citizens (or otherwise lawfully-present individuals) to present documentation proving their lawfulness, in the event that they are accused of a civil immigration law. We've already seen folks held for extended periods of time - with intent to hold indefinitely - that were ready and able to prove identification, immigration, and even citizenship. It's a big problem that relies on believing in good-faith for the government ("Why would I be held for an immigration law? I can show my passport with just a car ride home and the passcode to my safe!"), when the government is already acting in bad faith - and not offering strict standards or guarantees (due process, deliberation) for you to prove your lawfulness - before their detention, even if unfounded, starts negatively impacting your life.
And on the note of the case law reinforcing these actions, there's case law for many other actions that we've been compelled to disagree with over the history of this nation. If anything, ongoing case law just means Congress routed a life-altering decision into a DOJ tribunal where hearsay flies, evidence can be withheld as “law-enforcement-sensitive,” with no lawyers provided, and people can sit in detention that I described in my above paragraph for months. My point remains that we often start (and finish) the process to boot someone from the country with less process than you get over a $20* debt. THIS IS BAD PROCEDURE
