President Trump on Monday complained of being “stymied at every turn” by the courts, arguing the administration can’t hold trials for migrants it plans to deport amid accusations they are gang members.
The remark was Trump’s first on the topic since the Supreme Court agreed to intervene early Saturday morning, halting flights as the administration prepared to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants, presumably to a prison in El Salvador.
“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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
While Trump complained of the inability to deport migrants to Venezuela, he has not been barred from deporting migrants there, though Venezuela in the past has resisted accepting deportation flights.
Trump went on to claim it was “not possible” to hold trials for all migrants the administration wishes to deport, though those in the U.S. regardless of immigration status are entitled to due process and many wish to contest allegations they are gang members.
“We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,” Trump added in his Truth Social post. “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.”
The president’s post appeared to partly be a response to critics who have argued the administration is violating the due process of certain individuals being deported, particularly in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
The case of Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man from El Salvador, has become a flashpoint in Trump’s deportation efforts. The administration earlier this month acknowledged it mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, where he was initially being held at a notorious mega-prison.
While the Supreme Court ruled that the administration had to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, Trump and other officials have made clear they have no intention of returning him to the United States.
The president initially said he would respect the Supreme Court’s ruling. Instead, the administration released documents purporting to show Abrego Garcia’s ties to the MS-13 gang, an accusation that rests largely on a tip from one confidential informant. Officials have also highlighted allegations of domestic abuse from Abrego Garcia’s wife, which she later declined to pursue.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador late last week, argued the case was a matter of basic rights.
“If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights and due process for everyone else in America,” Van Hollen said on “Meet the Press.”
Beyond Abrego Garcia, other Venezuelan men deported under the Alien Enemies Act have been deported in part based on tattoos.
One man was accused of being a member of the Tren de Aragua gang based on having tattoos reading “mom” and “dad” in Spanish beneath a crown, documents show. Friends have said the crown was a nod to the Three Kings Day celebrations his hometown is known for, not the gang.
Another man, a soccer player, was identified as having gang tattoos, but the designs were a nod to the Spanish soccer powerhouse Real Madrid.
Trump also gave a shoutout to Justice Samuel Alito, saying he “correctly wants to dissolve the pause on deportations.”
“He is right on this! If we don’t get these criminals out of our Country, we are not going to have a Country any longer,” Trump added.
Alito, in his own dissent that landed shortly before midnight, criticized his colleagues for acting “literally in the middle of the night” in grounding potential flights.
“The Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order,” he wrote.
“I refused to join the Court’s order because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate.”
