White House border czar Tom Homan on Sunday promoted the Trump administration’s deportation of alleged migrant gang members, saying the president is operating under federal law and will not defy court orders.
Mr. Homan also pushed back against critics who raised concerns about due process rights after President Trump invoked a rarely used wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to fly 240 alleged members of Tren de Aragua and 21 alleged MS-13 members to a high-security prison in El Salvador.
“Due process? What was Laken Riley’s due process?” Mr. Homan said on ABC’s “This Week,” referring to a nursing student who was murdered by a Venezuelan illegal immigrant. “What were all these young women that were killed and raped by members of TdA? What was their due process? How about the young lady that was burned alive on the subway? Where was her due process?
“The bottom line is that plane was full of people designed as terrorists,” Mr. Homan said. “Every Venezuelan on that flight was a TdA member based on numerous criminal investigations, on intelligence reports and a lot of work by ICE officers.”
“They were given due process according to the laws on the books,” Mr. Homan said. “You see, that’s the difference between the Trump administration and the Biden administration — we actually are using the laws on the books to enforce immigration laws and secure the border at the highest level it has ever been.”
The Trump administration’s aggressive deportation push has triggered a constitutional showdown between the White House and the courts.
Leaning on the Alien Enemies Act and Title 8 of the U.S. Code, Mr. Trump last week ordered the migrants deported as TdA gang members and thus terrorists engaged in an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” into the United States.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the planes grounded and any already in the air to be turned around. Still, the Trump administration kept them en route to El Salvador, where the U.S. is paying $20,000 per person per year to house them in a maximum security prison.
Mr. Trump, in turn, has called Judge Boasberg “a radical left lunatic” and for him to be impeached.
Judge Boasberg on Friday said the government lawyers have been “intemperate and disrespectful” and questioned why the administration rushed to deport the migrants.
“It seems to be the only reason to do that is if you know it’s a problem and you want to get them out of the country,” Judge Boasberg said.
On Sunday, Mr. Homan said the administration is going to “continue to arrest public safety threats, national security threats” and “continue to deport them from the United States.”
“Despite what he thinks, we are going to keep targeting the worst of the worst, which we have been doing since Day One, and deporting them from the United States through the various laws on the books,” Mr. Homan said.
