Should American Collectors Get at Least the Same "Due Process Rights" as Illegal Aliens Who Are Alleged to be MS-13 Gang Members?

No, at least according to the the Hon. J. Harvie Wilkinson, the 4th Circuit Judge, who mainstream media is lauding for his recent take down of the Trump Administration for refusing to give an illegal alien alleged to also be a MS-13 gang member "due process" before "repatriating" him to his own country of El Salvador, where he was thrown in prison.  The Trump Administration had predicated its decision-making on the President's foreign policy powers and the Alien and Sedition Acts, which go back to the John Adams Administration.  

In stark contrast, when Wilkinson wrote the majority opinion in the ACCG case, he held that the President's "foreign policy" powers precluded both judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act of the controversial decision to impose import restrictions on coins as well as any meaningful defense of a resulting forfeiture action.  Indeed, at oral argument, Wilkinson lectured CPO about how the President's power was not subject to anything but the most superficial judicial review, regardless of the ACCG's allegations that State Department officials had ignored governing law, misled Congress and the public in official government reports about the decision, and had engaged in cronyism with archaeological advocacy groups.  

So what gives?  Sadly, Wilkinson's result-oriented decision making is par for the course.  These days the federal judiciary is dominated by former government attorneys like Wilkinson.  Their rulings have been essential to the expansion of government bureaucratic power and the erosion of our rights, including that to our private property.  While such judges are generally all too happy to expand that bureaucratic power further, they balk at Trump's own exercise of his powers, particularly where Team Trump has sought to tear down the status quo and its protections for favored interest groups. Sadly, collectors don't fall in that category.  

So is there any solution?  Yes, Congress must limit bureaucratic and prosecutorial discretion by federalizing all foreign claims to "cultural property," by ensuring that the burden of proof is on the government before that "cultural property" is seized and forfeited, and by making the creation of any import restrictions on "cultural property" subject to the limitations found in the Administrative Procedure Act.  But that will take collector engagement to make it all happen.