President Donald Trump on Sunday explicitly advocated depriving undocumented immigrants of their due-process rights, arguing that people who cross the border into the United States illegally were invaders and must immediately be deported without trial or an appearance before a judge.
“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” the president said on Twitter as he was being driven to his private golf club in Northern Virginia. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.”
We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Most children come without parents…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2018
Trump’s attack on the judicial system sowed more confusion as lawmakers struggle to reach consensus on immigration legislation and as federal agencies scramble to reunite thousands of migrant children and their parents who had been separated at the border under an administration policy that the president abruptly reversed last week.
“What President Trump has suggested here is both illegal and unconstitutional,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Any official who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws should disavow it unequivocally.”
Trump has been criticizing immigration judges for weeks, both exaggerating the number currently hearing cases and saying that hiring more — as some members of Congress have proposed — would be unnecessary.
The House is preparing to vote this week on a broad, GOP immigration bill, but although the White House supports the legislation its prospects for passage appeared dim Sunday, both because Democrats oppose the measure and because Republicans have long been divided over how restrictive immigration laws should be.
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