President Trump stated on Tuesday (22) that undocumented immigrants should not have the right to trials, insisting that his administration should be able to deport them without needing a hearing before a judge.
The comments, made in the Oval Office in front of reporters, were Trump’s latest criticism of the judiciary, which, according to him, is inhibiting his deportation powers. Trump falsely claimed that countries like Congo and Venezuela had “emptied” their prisons into the United States and that, therefore, he needed to bypass constitutional due process requirements to expel the immigrants quickly.
“I hope we can get the cooperation of the courts, because we have thousands of people ready to leave and it’s not possible to have a trial for all of them,” Trump said. “That wasn’t the intention. The system wasn’t made with that intention. And we don’t think there’s anything that says that.”
He claimed that the “very bad people” he was removing from the country included murderers, drug traffickers, and mentally ill individuals.
“We’re taking them out of jail, and a judge can’t say: ‘No, you need to have a trial’,” Trump said. “The trial will take two years. We’ll have a very dangerous country if we’re not allowed to do what we have the right to do.”
He made similar statements in a social media post on Monday, in which he wrote: “We can’t give everyone a trial, because that would take, without exaggeration, 200 years.”
Trump’s statements generated quick negative reaction.
Rep. Jonathan L. Jackson, a Democrat from Illinois, wrote on social media: “‘We can’t give everyone a trial’ — sorry, what?! That’s pure #dictator talk. Due process isn’t optional because it’s inconvenient. We’re in the United States, not a banana republic. If you want to destroy the Constitution, just say so.”
Trump’s comments came after the Supreme Court, on Saturday morning (19), temporarily blocked the government from deporting a group of Venezuelan immigrants accused of being gang members, under the broad powers of a rarely invoked wartime law.
Last month, Trump issued a proclamation invoking the ‘Alien Enemies Act’ as a way to deport immigrants who, according to him, were members of Tren de Aragua, a violent Venezuelan street gang. The law, passed in 1798, has only been used three times in U.S. history, during periods of declared war.
The Supreme Court ruled that those subject to the statute need the opportunity to challenge their removal.
Source: The New York Times