Donald Trump has seemingly breached his presidential oath and targeted the constitution with a controversial statement regarding the deportation of immigrants.
The president remains steadfast in his strict immigration policy, as he attempts to remove non-US citizens from the country. To achieve this, he has been leveraging an outdated wartime statute—the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—which was previously invoked for ‘internment camps’ during World War Two.
In a recent ruling, the Supreme Court permitted Trump to employ this legislation to advance his plan for widespread deportations. This law notably provides a means to expel migrants accused of crimes, such as involvement with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua or the MS-13 gang, without the need for court intervention or hearings.
Although the justices approved this approach, they issued a cautionary note emphasizing that those deported must have the chance to contest their removal.
However, the president appears to be ignoring this warning, even hinting at the potential violation of the Constitution.
On his Truth Social platform, Trump stated: “If we don’t get these criminals out of our Country, we are not going to have a Country any longer.
“We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years. We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country.
“Such a thing is not possible to do.”
This statement seems to contradict the constitutional right to due process. According to the National Constitution Center, the Fourteenth Amendment assures ‘procedural protections, such as notice and a hearing before termination.’ It also restricts US states from denying ‘any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.’
Legal professionals on Reddit have remarked that Trump’s remarks ‘openly dismiss a foundational constitutional protection,’ noting that he has ‘directly betrayed his oath of office, outlined clearly in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution to ‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
“Allowing a President to openly reject constitutional rights sets a dangerous precedent that weakens the foundation of American constitutional governance,” the r/law thread asserts, arguing for Trump’s impeachment and removal due to this apparent violation.
Nonetheless, such cautions seem to be ignored, as Trump continued to express his discontent with the US legal system in his post.
He wrote: “I’m doing what I was elected to do, remove criminals from our Country, but the Courts don’t seem to want me to do that. My team is fantastic, doing an incredible job, however, they are being stymied at every turn by even the U.S. Supreme Court, which I have such great respect for, but which seemingly doesn’t want me to send violent criminals and terrorists back to Venezuela, or any other Country, for that matter — People that came here illegally!”
He further commented: “The Courts are intimidated by the Radical Left who are, ‘playing the Ref.’ Great Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito correctly wants to dissolve the pause on deportations. He is right on this!
“What a ridiculous situation we are in. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
A significant number of individuals have already been deported without legal objections under the old law, including 261 individuals accused of gang involvement who were sent to the notorious El Salvador mega-jail CECOT, despite a lower court’s attempt to halt their removal.