Bodies pile up in El Salvador's CECOT prison
Donald Trump on Monday, in one of the most outlandish statements of his chaotic time in the White House, attacked the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) -- which has done him one unlawful favor after another -- accusing the justices of "caving to the radical left" because they put a pause on his efforts to deport U.S. residents to a prison in El Salvador without due process.
Trump went so far as to say "we cannot give everyone a trial," a reference to migrants he claims are "violent criminals and terrorists . . ." and should be forced out of the United States in an extrajudicial fashion.
In a jointly published article at Rolling Stone and Yahoo! News, Andrew Perez examines statements that are extreme, even by Trump's expansive standards. Under the headline "Trump Attacks the Supreme Court, Says America ‘Cannot Give Everyone a Trial’," Perez writes:
Donald Trump slammed the Supreme Court on Monday after the justices temporarily blocked him from deporting Venezuelan immigrants, while asserting that America “cannot give everyone a trial” — a bedrock constitutional right.
The high court over the weekend took up an emergency petition from the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, which warned that Trump’s administration was preparing to deport another group of Venezuelan immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act without giving them a reasonable opportunity to contest their removals.
Trump previously shipped hundreds of Venezuelan men, without due process, to the CECOT torture prison in El Salvador. He did so after invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law used to justify the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Trump claims he can use the law to deport Venezuelans who are allegedly members of gangs that he has deemed terrorist organizations — and his administration claims it doesn’t have to bring anyone back, even when courts say to do so.
Pundits and political figures have been making anxious statements for weeks that the U.S. could face a constitutional crisis if Trump resorts to defying court orders, especially from SCOTUS. Well, it looks like the crisis is here. Perez writes:
The Supreme Court, which conservatives control 6-3, ruled earlier this month that the Trump administration must notify immigrants he’s detained under the Alien Enemies Act that they are subject to removal under the act. Further, the justices wrote: “The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”
The ACLU warned the administration is not complying with that order — and was giving many of the Venezuelan detainees fewer than 24 hours to challenge their removals. Many of them were reportedly already placed on buses headed to the airport.
While lower courts refused to step in, the Supreme Court issued an order blocking the deportations “until further order of this court,” inviting Trump’s solicitor general to file a response to the ACLU’s application with the court.
Trump's statements this week revealed him to be both unhinged and hypocritical. From the Rolling Stone/Yahoo! report:
Trump, who keeps arguing it should be illegal to criticize the Supreme Court, lashed out at the justices on Monday.
“I’m doing what I was elected to do, remove criminals from our Country, but the Courts don’t seem to want me to do that,” he wrote on Truth Social. “My team is fantastic, doing an incredible job, however, they are being stymied at every turn by even the U.S. Supreme Court, which I have such great respect for, but which seemingly doesn’t want me to send violent criminals and terrorists back to Venezuela, or any other Country, for that matter.”
The president claimed it would be impossible to extend due process rights — as required under the Fifth Amendment — to all of the immigrants he wants to deport.
“We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,” he wrote. “We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country. Such a thing is not possible to do. What a ridiculous situation we are in.”
As president, Trump helped build a 6-3 conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court. Those justices, in turn, helped clear the way for Trump to win the presidency again.
Trump repeatedly thanked the conservative Supreme Court justices, by name, at 2024 campaign events, and he effusively thanked Chief Justice John Roberts just last month, following his address to Congress. “Thank you again,” Trump told him, adding: “I won’t forget.”
Now that the Supreme Court expects Trump to afford immigrants basic due process rights before shipping them to prison in El Salvador, he appears to have quickly forgotten what the justices did for him.
Trump's statements not only are over the top and hypocritical, they also are ignorant. How ignorant? We will address that question in an upcoming post.
