"The Second Amendment protects the right of ‘the people’ to keep and bear arms. Our court has held that the term ‘the people’ under the Second Amendment does not include illegal aliens," U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, a conservative appointee of Republican President Trump, wrote in a concurring opinion.
"As to common sense, an illegal alien does not become ‘part of a national community’ by unlawfully entering it, any more than a thief becomes an owner of property by stealing it."
"The Court has repeatedly explained that ‘an alien… does not become one of the people to whom these things are secured by our Constitution by an attempt to enter forbidden by law’… But that’s, of course, the very definition of an illegal alien – one who ‘attempts to enter’ our country in a manner ‘forbidden by law.’"
"So illegal aliens are not part of ‘the people’ entitled to the protections of the Second Amendment.’
Ho added that for an illegal alien to appeal to the Constitution is to concede that the United States is governed by that supreme law.
"And ‘the power to exclude [aliens from the United States] has been determined to exist’ under our Constitution. So, the Court concluded, ‘those who are excluded cannot assert the rights in general obtaining in a land to which they do not belong as citizens or otherwise,'" Ho wrote.
