By
Amanda Terkel and
Lawrence Hurley
President Donald Trump argued in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that fulfilling his ambitious campaign promise to rapidly carry out mass deportations may take precedence over giving immigrants the right to due process under the Constitution, as required by courts.
A central part of Trump’s agenda has been implementing the “
largest deportation operation” in U.S. history, as he vowed during the 2024 campaign. In service of that goal, his administration has
pressed the courts to allow the immediate removal of immigrants it accuses of being members of a Venezuelan gang, without giving them a chance to plead their case before a judge.
In an interview last month with “Meet the Press,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “
Yes, of course,” when asked whether every person in the United States is entitled to due process.
Trump, however, isn’t so sure.
“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump replied when asked by “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker whether he agreed with Rubio. His comments came during a wide-ranging interview at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, which aired Sunday.
The Constitution’s
Fifth Amendment says “no person” shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”; it does not say that person must be a U.S. citizen, and the Supreme Court has long recognized that noncitizens have certain basic rights. Trump has also said that while “we always have to obey the laws,” he would like to see some “homegrown criminals” sent to El Salvador as well, a proposal that was
widely panned by legal experts.
When Welker tried to point out what the Fifth Amendment said, Trump suggested that such a process would slow him down too much.
“I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said. “We have thousands of people that are — some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.”
“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he added.
“But even given those numbers that you’re talking about, don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” Welker asked.
“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”
The Supreme Court has already made it clear to the Trump administration in three different recent decisions that it has to allow basic due process rights for immigrants based on the long-standing understanding of the laws.
That would not require full trials, as Trump suggested. What it would require is the chance to appear before an immigration judge. Such judges are not part of the judicial branch; they are employees of the Justice Department. Administration officials have spoken out against such constraints, leading to allegations that they have defied instructions from lower court judges and even the Supreme Court.
