The indians did not have laws in any meaningful sense. They hadn't even invented the wheel yet, so I find it highly unlikely they managed to formulate a workable set of laws. They probably applied tribal mores ad-hoc.
I'm in favor of stopping illegal immigration. However, to say that illegal immigrants (or terrorists, or enemy combatants, or any person the government wants to treat poorly) have no rights isn't exactly true in a historical sense.
People who say this generally believe that people have no rights except those rights that the government grants to them. These people need to read the Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
That paragraph, the theoretical underpinning of our Constitution, means 1. that people have these rights, wherever they go in the world, just by existing, irrespective of government; and 2. that the government is instituted solely to protect and enforce these rights, not to grant rights.
The fact that the government can summarily deport an immigrant, or indefinitely detain a person in Guantanamo (both deprive a person of his liberty) without charging them with a crime, and justify it by saying "it's ok, he's not a citizen" is a terrifying look at how far our country has strayed from its roots.
