To refer to Mr Ahmad as a polygamist is too kind. He was a bigamist i.e. he practiced bigamy.

Reasonable people can and will disagree on what is decent, fair, and humane. As law in the U.S. is based on precedent, it tends to be internally consistent. Is your complaint against holding a person in jail or against deportation? The legal cases say that holding a person (in jail, in a courtroom, in a DHS waiting area, etc) in order to ensure that person doesn’t disappear or forfeit bond is not punishment in and of itself. The reality is that many people who are told to leave under an order of deportation or who agree to voluntarily depart simply disappear, hence the need for posting a bond or holding the individual.

Being deported isn’t considered punishment under the law. The point IS what the law currently is. Changing it is a good idea too.

Yes, and equal protection didn’t apply once either. The point is not what the law currently is but whether or not the law is a) decent, fair and humane and b) internally consistent. Clearly putting someone in jail for a crime and then holding them in jail after their sentence is over and then deporting them is punishing someone at least twice if not three times for the same crime and would, by any common sense standard, violate the spirit of the protection against double jeopardy.

This man, whoever he was, whatever he did, died alone in conditions that someone with a better attorney might have successfully fought. He came to this country for whatever reason, but it can be assumed he hoped for better things for himself and his family. The system didn’t work for him. It should have. He worked hard. He tried to defend himself. He was punished for this. He died four years ago. Where was his NAACP? What gaps led to him being ignored by not only the South Asian community, but everyone else? If he can be forgotten so quickly, it’s just as likely we can be so forgotten. After all, what’s another dead desi.

But carry on with the stone-casting. When your kid gets pulled over on the NJ turnpike…you’ll be the first one to call the ACLU. Amuses me how we want our heroes to be saints. Perhaps you should google “Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, etc if you’re looking for the flawless man.

But perhaps I don’t need to, since I have you to speak for me. LOL.

Your statement is a reflection on you, wunderbar. You speak for noone but yourself and know nothing of the background of other commenters. You go from saying, “chances are,” to in the next sentence making it a statement of fact: “So this is not entirely about conditions of detention – it is about how one feels about immigration – legal and illegal and “other” perpipheral markers of identity.” It is about conditions of confinement. For YOU, it is about “‘other’ peripheral markers of identity.”

The Double Jeopardy Clause does not apply to proceedings to deport an individual. See Zuniga v Greene (1999) among other cases.