The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit officially ruled that illegal immigrants who reside in America do not have Second Amendment rights, according to a report from Breitbart.
The three-judge panel pointed to a previous lawsuit called United States v. Portillo–Munoz, which explicitly prohibits illegal immigrants “from possessing a firearm or ammunition. This topic was revisited after an illegal immigrant named Jose Paz Medina-Cantu was arrested for possession of a firearm and ammunition.
Medina-Cantu was charged with “possession of a firearm and ammunition as an illegal immigrant,” a specific crime thanks to the ruling in United States v. Portillo-Munoz. Medina-Cantu was also arrested for “illegal reentry into the United States.
The legal team for Medina-Cantu argued that the firearms charges should be dismissed because “the people” includes any person in America.
The three-judge panel concluded that “‘the people’ in the Second Amendment does not include aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”
The Fifth Circuit’s ruling comes in contrast to the finding of an Obama-appointed District Judge in Chicago who claimed prohibiting illegal immigrants from possessing firearms is a violation of the Second Amendment.
Sharon Johnson Coleman found that Heriberto Carbajal-Flores was not guilty of possession of a firearm as an illegal immigrant, even though he’s an illegal immigrant in possession of a firearm.
“Carbajal-Flores contends that he received and used the handgun solely for self-protection and protection of property during a time of documented civil unrest in the spring of 2020,” the judge wrote. “Thus, this Court finds that, as applied to Carbajal-Flores, [disarming illegal immigrants] is unconstitutional.”
The Chicago-based liberal judge cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which found that New York State could not constitutionally prevent anyone from carrying a pistol in public.
The case “established a framework for analyzing whether a challenged firearm regulation violates the Second Amendment,” Coleman said.
