Trump Attacks the Supreme Court, Says America ‘Cannot Give Everyone a Trial’
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 a notorious torture prison in El Salvador. He did so after invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a notorious 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.
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, 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.
First, the justices unanimously ruled that states couldn’t bar him from their ballots for helping incite a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Next, the court stalled Trump’s federal prosecution over his effort to overturn the 2020 election — and the conservative majority further gutted the case when it ruled that Trump was entitled to sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution.
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.
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Rolling Stone