Questioning the Legitimacy of the Expedited Removal Process – The Tall Task of Protecting the Constitutional Rights of One of America’s Most Marginalized Groups

This Note explores the origin and development of 8 U.S.C. § 1225—a heavily debated facet of the United States’ immigration law. Section 1225, colloquially referred to as the “expedited removal process,” has been interpreted to permit low-level immigration officers to summarily remove certain “arriving” noncitizens from the United States without affording them the procedural due process protections guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution to all individuals present in the United States. This Note posits that the current interpretation of § 1225, particularly the interpretation of “is arriving,” and application of the expedited removal process is inconsistent with well-established canons of statutory interpretation—particularly the plain meaning canon, the no superfluous words canon, and the constitutional presumption canon. This Note then puts forth an interpretation that is consistent with these central canons of interpretation. Finally, this Note argues that due to the Fifth Amendment’s broad applicability, the refusal to afford procedural safeguards prior to the denial of life, liberty, and property via the expedited removal process constitutes a wholly unconstitutional due process violation and that even the expansive entry fiction doctrine is not enough to save this unconstitutional removal process. Thus, the expedited removal process, as it is currently employed, must be abandoned and § 1225 must be either amended or repealed

Characterization of homologous sphingosine-1-phosphate lyase isoforms in the bacterial pathogen Burkholderia pseudomallei

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Sphingolipids (SLs) are ubiquitous elements in eukaryotic membranes and are also found in some bacterial and viral species. As well as playing an integral structural role, SLs also act as potent signalling molecules involved in numerous cellular pathways and have been linked to many human diseases. A central SL signalling molecule is sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) whose breakdown is catalysed by sphingosine-1-phosphate lyase (S1PL), a pyridoxal 5 '-phosphate (PLP) dependent enzyme that catalyses the cleavage of S1P to (2E)-hexadecenal (2E-HEX) and phosphoethanolamine (PE). Here we show the pathogenic bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei K96243 encodes two homologous proteins (S1PL2021 and S1PL2025) that display moderate sequence identity to known eukaryotic and prokaryotic S1PLs. Using an established mass spectrometry-based methodology we show that recombinant S1PL2021 is catalytically active. Using recombinant human fatty aldehyde dehydrogenase (FALDH) we developed a spectrophotometric, enzyme-coupled assay to detect 2E-HEX formation and measure the kinetic constants of the two B. pseudomallei S1PL isoforms. Furthermore, we determined the x-ray crystal structure of the PLP-bound form of S1PL2021 at 2.1 Å resolution revealing the enzyme displays a conserved structural fold and active site architecture comparable with known S1PLs. The combined data suggest that B. pseudomallei has the potential to degrade host SLs in a S1PL-dependent manner.The authors thanks the following for funding: The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) for an EastBio Doctoral Training Programme PhD studentship award to C McLean (BB/J01446X/1) and a grant awarded to DJ Campopiano (BB/I013687/1) that supported J Lowther and DJ Clarke. R Custodio was supported by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory under contract DSTLX-1000060221 (WP1). We thank the staff of the Diamond Light Source, UK for help with data collection. The authors thank Prof. John RW Govan (University of Edinburgh) for his suggestions regarding Burkholderia strains and enthusiastic support of this work. We also thanks Dr. Kevin Ralston for help in the synthesis of 2E-HEX. The data associated with this paper is available to download (http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/ds/1412)

Precision Electroweak Measurements on the Z resonance.

We report on the final electroweak measurements performed with data taken at the Z resonance by the experiments operating at the electron–positron colliders SLC and LEP. The data consist of 17 million Z decays accumulated by the ALEPH, DELPHI, L3 and OPAL experiments at LEP, and 600 thousand Z decays by the SLD experiment using a polarised beam at SLC. The measurements include cross-sections, forward–backward asymmetries and polarised asymmetries. The mass and width of the Z boson, mZ and ΓZ, and its couplings to fermions, for example the ρ parameter and the effective electroweak mixing angle for leptons, are precisely measured: The number of light neutrino species is determined to be 2.9840±0.0082, in agreement with the three observed generations of fundamental fermions. The results are compared to the predictions of the Standard Model (SM). At the Z-pole, electroweak radiative corrections beyond the running of the QED and QCD coupling constants are observed with a significance of five standard deviations, and in agreement with the Standard Model. Of the many Z-pole measurements, the forward–backward asymmetry in b-quark production shows the largest difference with respect to its SM expectation, at the level of 2.8 standard deviations. Through radiative corrections evaluated in the framework of the Standard Model, the Z-pole data are also used to predict the mass of the top quark, , and the mass of the W boson, . These indirect constraints are compared to the direct measurements, providing a stringent test of the SM. Using in addition the direct measurements of mt and mW, the mass of the as yet unobserved SM Higgs boson is predicted with a relative uncertainty of about 50% and found to be less than at 95% confidence level