What Hans von Spakovsky told Mark Levin is common-sense to anyone who respects the Constitution: immigration enforcement is a civil, administrative process, not a criminal prosecution, so the sweeping Miranda rituals of criminal courts don’t automatically apply to every interaction with ICE. The left loves to weaponize legal buzzwords to hamstring law enforcement, but confusing civil removal proceedings with criminal arrests would gut the executive branch’s ability to secure the border and enforce immigration laws.
The Miranda rule was crafted to protect criminal suspects during custodial interrogations and to ensure that confessions in criminal trials are voluntary and admissible under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. Miranda’s safeguards were never intended to convert routine administrative immigration questioning into a criminal accusatory process; their purpose is narrow and rooted in the unique stakes of criminal prosecutions.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that deportation and immigration proceedings are civil in nature, and that Congress and the executive branch have distinct authorities to detain and process noncitizens apart from the criminal justice system. Cases like Demore and Jennings make clear that immigration detention and removal are regulated by statute and national sovereignty concerns, not by the criminal rules that govern guilty pleas and criminal trials.
That legal distinction matters because Miranda is about admissibility of statements in criminal trials, not about whether an administrative agency can ask routine factual questions to determine status or identity. Forcing ICE to recite criminal warnings every time someone is processed would create legal confusion, waste agency resources, and hand advantage to smugglers and cartels who want loopholes to exploit. The Constitution protects rights, but it also entrusts the political branches with immigration enforcement for the national good.
Consider the practical reality: sanctuary rhetoric and activist lawsuits already tie the hands of officers trying to keep communities safe, and a mandatory Miranda regime for ICE would be the next gift to criminal networks and illegal entrants. The law must be applied sensibly — protecting individual rights without surrendering public safety or the rule of law to performative legalism. Judges and lawmakers who pretend constitutional protections require identical procedures in every context are not defending liberty; they are undermining the republic.
Conservatives should defend both the Constitution and the duty to secure the nation. That means insisting on clear legal distinctions, backing ICE officers who do the hard work of enforcement, and calling out the media and activists who conflate civil immigration tools with criminal procedure to score political points. Americans who pay taxes, raise families, and obey the law expect leaders who will protect borders and communities — not judges or pundits who handcuff enforcement with unnecessary legal formalities.
If the goal is to preserve liberty and order, the right answer is obvious: uphold statutory immigration enforcement, respect the doctrinal distinction between civil and criminal law, and stop letting political theater rewrite settled legal principles. Hans von Spakovsky was right to push back on the Miranda alarmism, and patriots should rally behind the sober rule of law rather than theatrical virtue signaling that leaves our country less secure.
