The Fifth Amendment to our Constitution says, in part, that “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

It says person, not certain persons, but all persons. That means it’s unconstitutional to snatch a person from their lives and imprison or deport them without allowing that person the opportunity to defend themselves before a court of law.

But it appears that due process of law is not something our federal government cares much about. Last week on a peaceful street in Worcester, a woman was confronted by a group of masked, armed men, handcuffed behind her back and forced into an unmarked vehicle. She had been getting into a car with her daughters and grandbaby when the nametagless men arrived and grabbed her. Very quickly a group of neighbors formed to stand against what appeared to be a kidnapping.

The men refused to show identification or a warrant and when they realized that they were now in danger from the growing crowd, they called the Worcester Police. The police, rather than assisting the people they are sworn to serve, instead assisted what turned out to be federal agents in detaining the mother. And then they forcibly arrested the woman’s 16-year-old daughter when she refused to let them take her mother away. This young woman had no idea where they were taking her mother and so she fought back with all that she had, only to be assaulted by four police officers, shoved to the ground and handcuffed.

Is this really where we are now? People being disappeared? The claim is that the mother was an illegal immigrant and had a prior arrest, but where is the evidence, the warrant? And even more important — where is she now? Will she get her day in court? Or will she be spirited away to some detention center in a more flexible state or country for that matter? She is not, of course, the first nor will she be the last person to be hunted and removed from our country. Thousands have already been taken away. But where will this end?

The next day our recurrent president’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, told reporters that the administration is actively “looking at” ways to end due process protections for unauthorized immigrants who are in the country. Hmm, immigrants are persons, are they not?

In an interview this past Sunday night on NBC News, the recurrent guy had this to say when asked about the Fifth Amendment and its due process requirement — “I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials.”

Yes, the president of the United States who took an oath to uphold the Constitution states for all to hear that following the law takes just too darn much time. And so, we’ll just skip that step if we feel like it. Now what will the Supreme Court have to say about that? We’ll see.

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The recurrent guy ran for reelection repeatedly promising to clear the country of illegal immigrants and to make it much harder for others to come here. He doesn’t like immigrants. Oh wait, except for those immigrants like his BFF (best friend forever), Elon Musk, richest man in the world and immigrant from South Africa.

Now, to make it crystal clear who he wants here and who he does not, the anti-immigration president has opened our borders to hordes of immigrants from South Africa, but only if they’re white, just like our Elon (though he has been forced out of the White House for disobeying the king one too many times). The first group of white South Africans, whose immigration applications have been fast tracked and prioritized, have arrived this very week.

The idea is to remove from our country those immigrants the recurrent guy and his administration believe are from the wrong country, with the wrong ethnicity, or color, and to invite and give refugee status to white, economically privileged people with no real need to be here.

So, how will this end? Will our courts, including the Supreme Court, refuse to allow this disappearing of whole sections of the Constitution? And if they do, will this administration respect and obey those judicial rulings? This must be stopped or it won’t just be illegal immigrants who are targeted, it will be anyone who pushes back against the regime. We’re already seeing this happening — the mayor of Newark, N.J. and a judge in Milwaukee, WI, have been arrested for simply doing their jobs while standing up for the rights of others.

If this administration can obliterate our constitutional protections of due process and get away with it, we’ll eventually find ourselves in a full-blown autocratic nightmare. So, get out into the streets and march, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, then write postcards, emails, phonebank, whatever you can do. It’s up to us!

Karen Gardner of Haydenville can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.