Trump administration acts like migrants don’t deserve due process, a dangerous pattern | Opinion

Nations have often been confronted with the option of doing away with basic rights in exchange for a promise to restore law and order. And the United States is facing this dilemma right now with President Trump’s sweeping actions to deport migrants with little regard for due process.

It’s easy to disregard migrants — whether those in the country legally or illegally — as unworthy of proper access to the courts and an opportunity to challenge their removal. There’s a growing chorus of conservatives, like White House aide Stephen Miller, saying people who “illegally invaded our country” aren’t entitled to such rights.

Trump has painted the majority of migrants as dangerous gang members. But what separates the U.S. and other democracies from autocratic regimes is that due process is available even to those a government dislikes. It’s what protects us from government abuse and prevents mistakes.

It’s clear that many Americans wanted quick action on immigration when they reelected Trump. But if his administration is willing to sidestep basic procedures to fulfill its immigration agenda, could the president also infringe on the rights of citizens to accomplish what he deems a public good?

The federal government has already conceded that it mistakenly deported a Maryland man to El Salvador “because of an administrative error.” He is now being held in the country’s notorious mega prison. The Trump administration — which accuses him of being a member of the MS-13 gang based on information from a “reliable source” — has said it could not bring him back because he is in Salvadoran custody. The family of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who has not committed any crimes in the U.S., denies his ties to the gang.

He’s not the only one who may have been deported based on wrong information. A lawsuit filed in federal court in Miami claims that Immigration and Customs Enforcement illegally deported a South Florida man to Guatemala without a judge’s order. The complaint says there are probably “dozens, if not hundreds” more people in the same situation.

And, as the Herald reported this week, the Trump administration has used tattoos to link Venezuelans to the gang Tren de Aragua, even if there is no other evidence that a person has a criminal past. Experts told the Herald, however, that Tren de Aragua, unlike Latin American criminal organizations, doesn’t identify itself through body art. Lawyers for some of those deported have said their clients were wrongly identified as gang members based on their tattoos.

The Trump administration has relied on the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to speed up those deportations. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Trump’s use of the wartime authority. Although the high court said, in a rebuke to the administration, that anyone subject to removal under the act is entitled to “an opportunity to challenge their removal,” the ruling has raised concerns about whether migrants will truly be able to access due process. People challenging Trump’s use of the act will have to rely on a complicated legal process called habeas corpus that is a rarely successful. There are also questions on whether people will be able to access a lawyer, CNN reported.

“Although the Court unanimously agreed that deportations without due process are illegal, the reality is the Trump Administration has been rapidly and erroneously deporting people, and has taken the position that those erroneously deported may be confined to foreign prisons with no redress,” a group of Democratic members of the House and Senate wrote in a statement last week.

And then, there’s the general meanness and cruelty that Trump’s mass deportation efforts demonstrate. Take the Cuban man, who had been trying to get is green card for years, swept away by officers while taking out the trash at his North Miami home last month — the moment captured by his own Ring video camera.

Some will certainly cheer at such images as a sign of Trump getting things done. But how far are Americans willing to go before they abandon the values that make us Americans?

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This story was originally published April 11, 2025 at 2:17 PM.