WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — When he took the Presidential Oath of Office for the second time on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump swore to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
But now, he is circumspect about his duties to uphold due process rights laid out in the Constitution, saying in a new interview that he does not know whether U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike deserve that guarantee.
The comments in a wide-ranging, and at moments combative, interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” came as the Republican president’s efforts to quickly enact his agenda face sharper headwinds with Americans just as his second administration crossed the 100-day mark, according to a recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Legal experts, including some federal judges, have made the case that the Trump administration is chipping away at due process in the United States.
Most notably, critics cite the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was living in Maryland when the Trump administration arrested him and exiled him to a prison in El Salvador without due process.
Trump claims without proof that Abrego Garcia is part of a violent transnational gang—a claim rooted in the words of a Maryland police officer who was deemed unfit to testify in court in a separate case following allegations of misconduct.
The Republican president has sought to turn the deportation into a test case for his campaign against illegal immigration despite a Supreme Court order saying the administration must work to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.
Asked in the interview whether U.S. citizens and noncitizens both deserve due process as laid out in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, Trump was noncommittal.
“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump said when pressed by Welker.
The Fifth Amendment provides “due process of law,” meaning a person has certain rights when it comes to being prosecuted for a crime. Also, the 14th Amendment says no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Trump said he has “brilliant lawyers … and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”
He said he was pushing to deport “some of the worst, most dangerous people on Earth,” but that courts are getting in his way.
“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” Trump said.
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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.
Mississippi Free Press News Editor Ashton Pittman made additions to this report.