The Grievance Audit holds the modern federal record up against the twenty-seven grievances of the Declaration of Independence. Quote the grievance, quote what the Founders built, lay out today’s record with citations. Terms per Black’s Law Dictionary. Reporting on documents, not legal advice.
The grievance
“For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences” — Declaration of Independence, para. 20 (1776)
The specific fear is precise and modern: not merely punishment, but relocation to escape the court’s reach. Ship a person far enough away, to a place where no friendly judge sits, and you have not just jailed him — you have severed him from the law itself. The offense was denying a person the forum that could hear his case.
What the Founders built
They nailed the trial to the place, and preserved the ancient key that unlocks any cell:
- U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 3: trial of crimes “shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed.”
- U.S. Const. amend. VI: an impartial jury “of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”
- U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 2: the writ of habeas corpus — the right to be brought before a court and made the government justify the detention — “shall not be suspended” except in narrow emergencies.
- U.S. Const. amend. V: due process is guaranteed to any “person,” not only to citizens.
The terms, per Black’s
- Habeas corpus — Black’s Law Dictionary (12th ed. 2024): a writ employed to bring a person before a court, most often to test the legality of the person’s detention.
- Rendition — per Black’s, the surrender or handing over of a person, especially the transfer of a suspect to another jurisdiction; “extraordinary rendition” denotes transfer outside ordinary legal process.
- Jurisdiction — per Black’s, a court’s power to decide a case or issue an order; without it, a court’s writ does not run.
The record today
A 1798 statute became a 2025 removal machine. In March 2025 the government invoked the Alien Enemies Act, 50 U.S.C. §§ 21–24 — a law from the era of the Quasi-War with France — to remove people it alleged were members of a Venezuelan gang. Several planeloads were flown to El Salvador and placed in CECOT, a maximum-security prison; roughly 137 people were transferred under the Act. The colonists’ phrase was “transported beyond Seas.” The 2025 version was a charter flight to a foreign megaprison.
Then came the argument the grievance is really about: the courts can’t reach them there. When detainees challenged the removals, the litigation turned on where — and whether — a court could act. On April 7, 2025, the Supreme Court, in a per curiam ruling (Trump v. J.G.G., No. 24A931, 604 U.S. ___ (2025)), vacated a district court’s orders, holding that such challenges had to be brought by habeas petition in the place of detention — a ruling that, critics noted, risked placing people already flown to El Salvador beyond the practical reach of any U.S. court. The government’s position, in effect, was that once a person is in a foreign prison, the American courthouse door has closed behind him. That is the 1776 grievance, restated as a jurisdictional argument.
The courts have not fully accepted it. In the months since, federal judges have pushed back: one found the Alien Enemies Act removals had denied due process, and another held that because the United States retained effective custody over the men in CECOT, U.S. courts retained jurisdiction over their fate — ordering the government to facilitate either their return or hearings that satisfy due process. The fight is ongoing. But its very existence proves the grievance is not a museum piece: in 2025, the question of whether the government can put a person beyond the reach of the law by shipping him abroad was a live case on the Supreme Court’s docket.
By the numbers
- 1798 — the age of the Alien Enemies Act invoked to carry out the 2025 removals (50 U.S.C. §§ 21–24)
- ~137 — people transferred to El Salvador’s CECOT prison under the Act in March 2025 (reporting; court filings)
- April 7, 2025 — Supreme Court per curiam ruling (No. 24A931) requiring habeas challenges in the place of detention
- “Persons,” not “citizens” — the reach of the Fifth Amendment’s due-process guarantee (U.S. Const. amend. V)
The counterweight
The government’s case, stated at full strength. The Alien Enemies Act is a real statute, passed by Congress and never repealed, expressly contemplating the removal of nationals of a hostile power; the people removed were non-citizens in immigration proceedings, not citizens hauled abroad for criminal trial, which is the grievance’s literal scenario. The executive has broad, long-recognized authority over immigration and the removal of aliens, and every administration deports people to other countries. The Supreme Court’s April 2025 ruling was, on its own terms, a modest venue holding — habeas must be filed where the detainee is held — not a declaration that the detainees had no rights. And the system, once again, is contesting the question in open court: judges have ruled against the government, ordered due process, and asserted continuing jurisdiction. This is adversarial law working, defenders argue, not law defeated.
All of that deserves to be weighed. And weighed honestly, it still leaves the core of the grievance exposed: the government transported people to a foreign prison and then argued that the transfer itself had stripped the courts of the power to help them. Whether or not that argument ultimately prevails, that it was made — by the United States, in 2025 — is the audit’s finding. The colonists knew the tactic on sight. So should we.
The audit
The 1776 grievance was transportation beyond the reach of the courts. The 2026 record is a 1798 statute used to fly roughly 137 people to a Salvadoran prison, a Supreme Court venue ruling that risked sealing them off from judicial review, and a running series of lower-court rulings insisting the law still reaches them. The ocean is the same width it was in 1776. The open question is whether the Constitution’s writ still crosses it.
Ubi jus, ibi remedium — where there is a right, there is a remedy. The whole fight of 2025 was over whether that remains true once the government buys the plane ticket.
Next in the series: obstructing immigration — the grievance the Founders made against a king who kept people out.
Sources:
- Declaration of Independence (1776) — National Archives transcript
- U.S. Const. art. III, § 2; art. I, § 9; amends. V, VI — venue, habeas corpus, due process, jury
- Alien Enemies Act, 50 U.S.C. §§ 21–24 (1798) — removal of alien enemies
- Supreme Court — Trump v. J.G.G., No. 24A931 (per curiam, Apr. 7, 2025) — habeas challenges must be brought in place of detention
- ACLU — Federal Court Finds Alien Enemies Act Removals Unlawful (2025) — due-process and jurisdiction rulings (advocacy source)
- NPR — Alien Enemies Act deportations violated due process, judge says (Dec. 2025) — later ruling
- Black’s Law Dictionary (12th ed. 2024) — definitions: habeas corpus; rendition; jurisdiction