Court Opinion

ID: 8448580
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-05 00:01:44.720957+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:48:57.361481
License: Public Domain

PREGERSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent. This is but one of a multitude of similar sad cases by which our government’s deportation of undocumented parents results in the deportation of their American-born citizen children, and effectively denies those children their birthrights. See Cerrillo v. INS, 809 F.2d 1419, 1426-27 (9th Cir.1987) (Requiring the government to conduct individualized analyses of hardships to U.S. citizen children). Our government’s conduct forces U.S. citizen *469children to accept de facto expulsion from their native land or give up their constitutionally protected right to remain with their parents. See, e.g., Moore v. City of E. Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 503-05, 97 S.Ct. 1932, 52 L.Ed.2d 531 (1977) (plurality opinion) (“Our decisions establish that the Constitution protects the sanctity of the family precisely because the institution of the family is deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.”); Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 651, 92 S.Ct. 1208, 31 L.Ed.2d 551 (1972) (recognizing that “[t]he integrity of the family unit has found protection in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”).
I hope and pray that soon the good men and women in our Congress will ameliorate the plight of families like Lin’s and give us humane laws that will not cause the disintegration of families.