President Donald Trump said he’s not sure if non-U.S. citizens deserve due process, suggesting that allowing migrants to have the trials provided under the Fifth Amendment could slow his deportation efforts.
“I don’t know,” Trump said on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” when asked whether non-citizens should get due process. “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. We have thousands of people that are some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.”
The Trump administration has been defiant in the face of what officials say are “activist judges” who stand in the way of rapid deportation efforts. It has deported some migrants, specifically Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act, without allowing them to fight their removal in court, but judges have blocked the administration from carrying out some deportations under the wartime law.
The administration also deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran sent to a prison in El Salvador despite a prior order that he could not be deported there. Although the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return in early April, he remains jailed there.
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Trump said he is deferring to Attorney General Pam Bondi on all things related to Abrego Garcia, who the administration has said is an MS-13 gang member. (His attorneys deny this claim.)
Administration officials have said that they have a mandate to deliver on Trump’s promised immigration agenda, which has been marked by swift deportations and questionable use of due process.
The White House said in a press conference last week that it “intends to comply” with El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, who has said he will not send Abrego Garcia back to the U.S.
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Violet Jira is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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