Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently defined habeas corpus before a congressional hearing as “the right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.”

And blew it.

OK, if habeas corpus says zip, nada, zilch about a president’s right to remove people from the United States, what does it say? Here are a few helpful facts that the former governor of North Dakota forgot in her gaffe.

• Function: It is a judicial order that requires the government to bring a detained individual before a court and justify the legality of their detention.

• It’s a constitutional right: Our founders wrote habeas corpus into the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 9), as a key bulwark against tyranny.

• Protection: It protects against unlawful imprisonment, ensuring that no person can be held without the right to challenge their detention before a judge.

• Exceptions: The Constitution states that the writ “shall not be suspended, unless when, in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion, the public safety may require it.”

• Latin meaning of habeas corpus: “Let us have the body.”

Beyond the personal embarrassment to Noem, the error is, well, gross, because she oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — the agency that’s been busting undocumented immigrants, international students and permanent residents and deporting them, or trying to deport them.

Incidentally, Noem exposed once again the present administration’s recklessness in hiring people to oversee a complex agency the hires don’t understand.

This is far from all.

Erik Prince, former head of the private military company Blackwater, insists that meeting President Trump’s tough deportation goals will demand that the federal government “supplement” ICE’s capabilities.

One of Prince’s supplementation proposals calls for one of his new companies to train and outfit as many as 100,000 armed and deputized citizens.

Think about that for a moment.

It means setting free on the streets of our nation non-state armed groups such as militias. While the present administration has not yet decided for or against the idea, the president has said he “wouldn’t be opposed to it, necessarily.”

I bring this up because some in the administration are now talking about suspending habeas corpus, a pillar of English common law, as I said above, predating the U.S. Constitution by 500 years. Indeed, it dates to 1215, when King John’s unhappy, put-upon barons met the reluctant and tyrannical king at Runnymede where they forced him to sign the Magna Carta or “Great Charter.”

The Magna Carta sought to limit the king’s power, particularly his ability to tax and impose justice without due process. The charter also protected certain rights of the barons, including the right to a fair trial and the right to be free from unlawful imprisonment.

The British poet Rudyard Kipling described what all of that meant far better than I can do:

“When through our ranks the Barons came,

With little thought of praise or blame,

But resolute to play the game,

They lumbered up to Runnymede;

And there they launched in solid time

The first attack on Right Divine–

The curt, uncompromising ‘Sign!’

That settled John at Runnymede.

“At Runnymede, at Runnymede,

Your rights were won at Runnymede!

No freeman shall be fined or bound,

Or dispossessed of freehold ground,

Except by lawful judgment found

And passed upon him by his peers.

Forget not, after all these years,

The Charter Signed at Runnymede.”

Those among us who’d object to being picked up and thrown into jail without a judge explaining why in a court of law will not forget.

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Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@auburn-reporter.com.