The First Circuit Court of Appeals handed down an important ruling last week concerning the Constitution and illegal U.S. residents, and, more specifically, the scope of Second Amendment protections.
The panel agreed that Alberto Rebollar Osorio, a Mexican citizen illegally living in the U.S., was properly indicted after being pulled over for a traffic stop in Maine. He was initially charged under the federal law banning non-citizens from possessing weapons, but a district court dismissed the indictment.
Not wanting armed non-citizens in the US is hardly new
Judge Nancy Torresen of the District of Maine determined that illegal migrants are part of “the people” who enjoy the right to keep and bear arms. The U.S. Justice Department appealed, and that led to last week’s ruling.
Chief Judge David Barron detailed the appeal court’s findings, and he applied the Bruen test of the nation’s historical tradition of gun laws to the case.
He noted that lawmakers throughout our history expressed concerns over those who may be “presumed allegiant to a foreign power and have not formally recognized the government’s authority.”
There is recent precedent for the First Circuit’s decision
Barron added that current federal law “fits within that tradition as a measure that aims to reduce the threat posed by a group similarly lacking a regulable relationship with the government.”
It is noteworthy that the First Circuit hardly blazed new territory with last week’s decision. In July 2025, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Second Amendment applies only to U.S. citizens.
The court declared that there is “strong historical evidence that the Founders would have considered such regulations compatible with the Second Amendment.” It further observed that those “outside the polity” were systematically disarmed unless they took a loyalty oath, which in those days included Catholics and British Loyalists.
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