Last week, President Trump signed into law the Laken Riley Act, which requires the attorney general to detain any non-citizen charged with theft or shoplifting, among other offenses. While doing so, the president claimed there are “30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”

Both the legislation and the president’s claim about our capacity to detain non-citizens indicate the current administration has taken a page out of “Alice in Wonderland,” in which the Queen of Hearts demands “Sentence first, verdict afterward.”

The Laken Riley Act mandates that non-citizens who are “charged with … arrested for … or admit (to) committing acts which constitute burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting or assault of a law enforcement officer” be taken into federal custody. It essentially ends the presumption of innocence for non-citizens since merely being accused of one of the designated offenses will subject the person to federal detention.

The act also allows federal........

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