Migrants to sue President Trump and government claiming their constitutional rights are violated

On Thursday, President Donald Trump was sued. The class-action lawsuit was filed by a dozen migrants traveling by foot from Honduras to the US to seek asylum.

The lawsuit came after the president threatened to stop a caravan from Central America from entering the US. Trump said he’d stop the asylum-seekers by deploying the military.

The lawsuit also implicates the Department of Homeland Security and others. The group claims that there’s a violation of their due process under the Fifth Amendment.

The Fifth Amendment states:

"no person… shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

For more on this story go to our Twitter account @amomama_usa. The asylum-seekers pointed to the 1993 case with former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

In the case, Scalia ruled that "it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in a deportation proceeding."

The Honduran nationals, who are suing President Donald Trump including 6 children, and they are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The suit was filed at the US District Court in Washington, D.C.

Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are currently “undergoing a well-documented human rights crisis.” The plaintiffs are claiming that their right to the Administrative Procedures Act and the Declaratory Judgment Act were being infringed upon.

A migrant caravan from Central America now has approximately 4,000 people. Their numbers have gone down from a high of 7,200.

The president has said he would stop the caravan from entering the US. The lawsuit states that Trump can’t stop asylum-seekers by using the military because their claim is fair.

The plaintiffs said the president was allegedly stoking "fear and hysteria" by claiming that criminals and gang members had joined the caravan. It also cited the Fox News interview that Trump has with Laura Ingraham.

There the president announced his plans to build tent cities to house migrants. In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs questioned the functionality of such a project.

They also asked if the living quarters would qualify under the Flores Agreement of 1997. The agreement protects asylum-seekers’ rights and limits how long minors can be held.

In the summer, a federal judge in California refused a request by the administration to modify the agreement to allow for longer family detention. An asylum clause of the Immigration and Nationality Act states that anyone who arrives in the US may apply for asylum based on a well-founded fear of persecution.

If Trump goes ahead with his decision it’s expected that it will prompt federal court challenges. The 12 asylum-seekers are funded by Nexus Services Inc.

The lawsuit is funded through a civil rights law firm called Nexus Derechos Humanos (Human Rights) Attorneys Inc. The president of Nexus Services Mike Donovan said this in a statement:

"Federal law enables migrants to apply for asylum in the United States. President Trump and his administration have used ‘increased enforcement,’ like separating families and lengthening detention to violate migrant rights."

According to the lawsuit, Trump can’t send troops into Mexico to cut off the caravan from crossing the border. Whether the National Guard is present at the border, once an immigrant mentions an intention to apply for asylum, the suit insisted that the process had begun.

Trump earlier said that he was prepared to send as many as 15,000 troops to the US-Mexican border to head off a caravan. This notion has been described by human rights activists as “a racist ploy.”

The president told reporters at the White House:

“We’ll do up to anywhere between 10 and 15,000 military personnel on top of border patrol, Ice and everybody else at the border. Nobody’s coming in. We’re not allowing people to come in.”