President Trump’s Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller ranted against Democrats for having the “temerity” to demand the Trump administration follow the U.S. Constitution and hold hearings for deported asylum seekers.
“They have the temerity to say that every single invader that Joe Biden let in should get their own individual judicial trial before they’re deported,” Miller, who is also White House deputy chief of staff for policy, told Fox News. “One at a time. Each one. A million-dollar trial in front of a communist judge to decide whether or not we can send them home.”
“How about hell no?” he raved while host Jesse Watters laughed at the absurdity of actually providing the due process guaranteed by the Constitution.
“How about we pick them up and get them out of this country so they can’t hurt anyone else,” Miller continued.
Miller’s rant glossed over the obvious fact that without court hearings, the government can round up whomever it wants and deport them without anyone verifying whether those people are, in fact, who the government says they are.
They could be refugees, legal immigrants, asylum seekers, or even U.S. citizens, and instead of being deported, they could be disappeared to internal black sites, as historians and legal scholars have pointed out.
As a result, even conservative Supreme Court justices—including Antonin Scalia—have held that the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment right to due process applies to deportation hearings, though the definition of due process can vary depending on the circumstances.
Asylum seekers, however, must always be granted hearings, according to PBS. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are also bound by the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, according to the ACLU.
The past two weeks have revealed the practical dangers of deporting planes full of people before a judge has had a chance to confirm their identities.
On March 15, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, which gives the president sweeping war-time deportation powers, and claimed the U.S. had been “invaded” by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He ordered a group of 250 Venezuelan and Salvadoran “gang members” be deported to the notorious mega-prison CECOT in El Salvador.
A judge issued an order blocking the deportations, but three planes left anyway.
Since then, press reports and legal filings have revealed that the alleged gang members actually included at least one man who had been granted legal refugee status, plus a pro soccer player, a gay makeup artist, a 26-year-old barber, and a 24-year-old father—all with no criminal records in the U.S. and all formally seeking asylum.
Even the conservative-leaning podcaster Joe Rogan called the deportations “horrific.”
“You got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting lassoed up and deported and sent to El Salvador prisons,” he said.
This week, the government also admitted it had mistakenly deported a Maryland father to CECOT who had been granted legal protected status, but officials have refused to bring the man home.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia fled El Salvador when he was a teenager because gang members were extorting his mother’s pupusa business. When she couldn’t pay, they threatened to kill both Abrego Garcia and his older brother if they didn’t join the gang, according to an order granting him a form of protection called a “withholding of removal.”
The order says he can’t be deported to his home country because he’s more likely than not to face persecution there.
Even after the government admitted in a legal filing that he’d been sent to CECOT because of an “administrative error,” Vice President JD Vance falsely claimed Abrego Garcia was a “convicted” member of the MS-13 gang.
During his deportation hearings in 2019, he had been denied bail because a confidential informant had told police he was an MS-13 member. However, he was ultimately granted the withholding of removal order and released.
On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration had “credible evidence” Abrego Garcia was involved in human trafficking, according to NBC. She didn’t say what that evidence was or why it hadn’t been brought to a judge to reconsider Abrego Garcia’s removal status, as required by law.
Instead, on March 12, ICE officials pulled him over and arrested him without warning, saying his immigration status had changed. Three days later, he was flown to a prison camp in El Salvador, a country where inmates have been electrocuted, tortured, and beaten to death, according to a 2023 U.S. State Department report. His family has sued to try to bring him home.
Even though the Trump administration admitted the deportation was a mistake, Watters and Miller mocked concerns about Abrego Garcia’s jailing.
“So, what are [Democrats] saying about this Maryland dad?” Watters asked Miller. “That this guy raked leaves, he licked his ice cream cone on vacation with the family down at the beach? Like how nice of a guy can they make this guy out to be when he’s been designated a gang member and a trafficker?”
“Jesse, you and I have never received in our lives as much positive press as this MS-13 gang member,” Miller said, as Watters laughed and exclaimed, “I know!”
“We couldn’t get headlines like that if our lives depended on it,” he continued.
