Fox News conservative legal commentator Andy McCarthy said in a Thursday interview it seems politics is “overwhelming the law here,” in the debate surrounding the Trump administration’s efforts to deport alleged gang members.
McCarthy pushed back on Vice President Vance’s recent comments suggesting criticism of administration’s deportation strategy “is such a weird, mistaken placement of priorities,” and that, “We do not ask permission from far-left Democrats before we deport illegal immigrants. We do the American people’s business.”
“Well, I just think the politics is overwhelming the law here,” McCarthy said on Fox News, when asked to respond to Vance’s comments, which he made in an earlier interview on “Fox and Friends.”
“No one is saying they can’t deport these people,” McCarthy continued. “Nobody is saying that. But in the United States, we have due process of law.”
McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, said most, if not all, of the alleged foreign terrorists he prosecuted received life sentences—but only after appearing before a judge.
“I couldn’t say to the agent, ‘Go arrest them, and instead of bringing them to court, put them on a plane and take them to a third country,” McCarthy said, in a nod to the government flying alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador for detainment.
“We have laws about… the process that you have to go through in order to obtain that outcome,” McCarthy added.
McCarthy said he thinks the courts have been clear that they are not going to interfere much on decisions “about who gets to be in this country and who doesn’t get to be in this county,” saying judges seem to be deferring to the “political branches” for those decisions.
“They’re going to have a lot of running room on that,” he said.
“But you have comply with the due process,” McCarthy added. “They’re very clear on that.”
