Quite recently, we have had two Presidents claim that non-citizens had no right to challenge their imprisonment by the United States (Bush in Gitmo and Obama on Bagram AFB in the Middle East) who ran smack into a Supreme Court that found their actions unconstitutional.
The notion that Constitutional protections cannot apply to non-citizens is simply not true, even when applied to non-citizens being held by the US off of US soil.
I understand this and I'm heartened that the Supreme Court majority continues to find that. I was getting at the distinction between what the majority ruled; that excessive fines are a breach of due process, which applies to all "persons", and the comment that Justice Thomas would have preferred to arrive at the 'same outcome' on the basis that it was a breach of the 'privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States’.
My point is that those are different outcomes, not the same; one protects me - a person in the US who is not a US citizen - and the other does not. The difference is also a furtherance of a generally authoritarian idea that non-US-citizens should have not equal protection under the law.
Speaking as another non-citizen, you should be concerned that something as important as protection of rights of non-citizens, hinges in its entirety on a very convoluted and non-obvious reading of the Due Process Clause of 14A.
Quite recently, we have had two Presidents claim that non-citizens had no right to challenge their imprisonment by the United States
No, the argument was that foreign terrorists and other non-state enemy combatants were not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the US legal system (because they weren't on US soil when captured, and as non-state combatants that weren't covered by any treaties to which the US was a party) and thus also not afforded its protections.
However, as a matter of international law, a country generally has legal jurisdiction over any person physically present in the country, whether present legally or otherwise, excepting specific diplomatic personnel (as defined by local law or treaty).
This was the reason for holding them indefinitely in an military facility located in another country. However, under US law, military facilities are considered US soil, and so persons being held in US military facilities are subject to the jurisdiction (and protection) of the US legal system.
In the case of non-citizens being held outside of any US jurisdiction, what court has standing to rule? Where would I file a case if I had one?
This reminds me a bit of the Roman concept of the pomerium. Anything outside of the arbitrary line deciding what was Rome and what wasn't, was "anything goes."
Nobody. But US military facilities are considered US soil and thus US jurisdiction.
In the SCOTUS rulings on Guantanamo, SCOTUS went further and stated that they would have ruled the same way if it had been a CIA facility instead of a military facility, so long as Cuba had granted the CIA permission to exclusively use the land for its own purposes.
The notion that Constitutional protections cannot apply to non-citizens is simply not true, even when applied to non-citizens being held by the US off of US soil.