The fourteenth amendment guarantees due process and equal protection of the laws to all "persons" not just to American citizens. If nothing else due process means that you have to afford a hearing to an individual. Further, if you intend to round up Muslims and expel them or even incarcerate them you simply cannot do so because of their status as Muslims. You have to have some overt act by at least one of them acting in concert with others and then you have a conspiracy. You might even have a RICO action such as was effectively brought against the Ku Klux Klan and the Mafia. But note, mafioso's were prosecuted because of their actions in furtherance of a conspiracy not because of their status as Italians
If a citizen is returning to America he cannot be denied entrance merely because he is a Muslim, and every word out of Donald Trump's mouth confirms that that's what he intends to do. It is a different matter if you intend to deny noncitizen Muslims entrance into the country. Even that has constitutional and treaty problems but at least it does not flagrantly fly into the face of the Constitution. Once that Muslim gets into the country he gets fourteenth amendment protections.
That is why I have always said that it is dangerous to admit Muslims and should be avoided. Certainly it is mindless to admit Muslims wholesale as Obama is bent on doing. Once a fifth columnist gains entry onto American soil our Constitution works on his behalf and against our own security. The practical problems of surveillance are enormous, the expense is terrific, the odds of 100% success are very bad, we have morphed a war into a criminal process regulated by the Constitution. We have by waving a magic wand confined ourselves to being armed with knives in a gunfight or, worse, a war.
As to denying Muslims constitutional rights simply by changing the definition of religion, good luck with that. For example, when Mormons practiced polygamy openly, we outlawed the practice but not the religion. When Rastafarians wanted to smoke weed we did not outlaw the religion. Likewise when Jews wanted to practice kosher slaughter. We distinguish the action from the religion.
I share your frustration. I have long published on these threads several scenarios by which Muslim fanatics can actually bring down the Republic with a few well-placed weapons of mass destruction. Jihad poses an existential threat to our nation. We are thinking primarily in terms of Middle Eastern Muslims but we have a rapidly burgeoning group of African-Americans who are converting to Islam and who can then operate with all the protections of our Constitution. Our Constitution, while concededly not a suicide pact, certainly prevents us from waging war without restraint. Better to keep all this offshore.
