The remarks, which he made in the Oval Office in front of reporters, were Trump’s latest broadside against the judiciary, which he has said is inhibiting his deportation powers. Trump falsely claimed that countries like Congo and Venezuela had emptied their prisons into the United States and that he therefore needed to bypass the constitutional demands of due process to expel the immigrants quickly.
“I hope we get cooperation from the courts, because we have thousands of people that are ready to go out and you can’t have a trial for all of these people,” Trump said. “It wasn’t meant. The system wasn’t meant. 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 killers, drug dealers and the mentally ill.
“We’re getting them out, and a judge can’t say, ‘No, you have to have a trial,'” Trump said. “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.”
He made similar statements in a social media post on Monday in which he wrote, “We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years.” Trump’s remarks have drawn swift backlash. Rep. Jonathan L. Jackson, D-Ill., wrote on social media: “‘We can’t give everyone a trial’ — excuse me, what?! That’s straight-up #dictator talk. Due process isn’t optional because it’s inconvenient. This is the United States, not a banana republic. If you want to shred the Constitution, just say so.”
Trump’s comments came after the Supreme Court, early Saturday, temporarily blocked the administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants it accused of being gang members under the expansive powers of a rarely invoked wartime law.
Trump issued a proclamation last month invoking the Alien Enemies Act as a way to deport immigrants he alleged were members of Tren de Aragua, a violent Venezuelan street gang. The law, which was passed in 1798, has been used only three times before in U.S. history, during periods of declared war.
The Supreme Court has ruled that those subject to the statute needed to be given the opportunity to challenge their removal.
The Trump administration has also been dogged by the case of a Salvadoran man living in Maryland who was deported because of an “administrative error.” The Supreme Court ordered the administration nearly two weeks ago to facilitate his return so he could go through the legal system in the United States, but the White House has so far not fulfilled that order.
The White House posted on social media that the man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was “never coming back.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
