President Donald Trump admitted earlier this month that the “homegrowns are next.” Now he refused to eliminate the possibility that U.S. citizens could be deported by mistake.
Steeped in controversy over his recent orders to remove green card holders and deportations of immigrants without due process, the president appeared to confess in an interview with The Atlantic that accidental deportations of U.S. citizens are not inconceivable.
Asked what would happen if his administration mistakenly removed the wrong person or an American citizen, Trump told the magazine: “Let me tell you that nothing will ever be perfect in this world.”
Trump’s comment about the “homegrowns” was made to El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who has refused to help return Salvadoran father Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States even after U.S. government attorneys admitted his removal to a brutal mega-prison was due to an “administrative” mistake. The Trump administration has since doubled down on its stance that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang and will not again step foot back on U.S. soil.
Pressed on if he was concerned that he could have deported the wrong people, the president said: “You know, I’m not involved in that. I have many people, many layers of people that do that.” He added: “I would say they are all extremely tough, dangerous people. I would say that. And, don’t forget, they came in the country illegally.”
The president’s remarks come amid recent rebukes from a smattering of federal judges over his administration’s lack of due process when deporting immigrants.
As recently as Saturday, a district judge in Louisiana said a two-year-old U.S. citizen appears to have been deported to Honduras with “no meaningful process.”
Meanwhile, the administration has launched removal proceedings for some green card holders, including Columbia graduate student and activist Mahmoud Khalil, who says he mediated discussions between the school and pro-Palestine protesters last year. The Trump administration has labeled him “pro-Hamas.” After a judge this month ruled Khalil could be deported, his lawyer said his client “was subject to a charade of due process, a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing, and a weaponization of immigration law to suppress dissent.”
A federal judge in Washington, D.C. found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for ignoring court orders to return planes carrying alleged Venezuelan gang members deported to a brutal Salvadoran mega-prison using the 1798 wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act. “I think the judge is horrible,” Trump told The Atlantic.
Weeks earlier, the Supreme Court weighed in on whether the Trump administration could use the law for deportations. Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that the government sent “scores” of Venezuelan nationals to a foreign prison “without any due process of law, under the auspices of the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law designed for times of war.”
A divided court allowed the administration to continue using the centuries-old law to deport immigrants while the legal challenge plays out in court, but the majority added that the deportees “entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.”
Last week, Trump also made comments suggesting that due process would take too long and that his administration should have the authority to remove immigrants without trials.
“We’re getting them out, and a judge can’t say, ‘No, you have to have a trial,’” Trump said in the Oval Office last week. “The trial is going to take two years. We’re going to have a very dangerous country if we’re not allowed to do what we’re entitled to do.”
A day earlier, he posted on his Truth Social account: “We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years.”
