On Sunday, White House border czar Tom Homan defended the Trump administration’s deportation of alleged migrant gang members, emphasizing that the president is acting within federal law and will not ignore court orders.
Homan also addressed critics who expressed concerns about due process rights, after President Trump invoked the seldom-used Alien Enemies Act of 1798. This law facilitated the transfer of 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?” 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,” Homan added. “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. 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 efforts have sparked what his supporters see as a manufactured constitutional clash between the White House and the Judiciary. Citing the Alien Enemies Act and Title 8 of the U.S. Code, Trump ordered the deportation of migrants last week, labeling them as members of the Tren de Aragua gang (TdA) and designating them as terrorists involved in an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” into the United States.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered that the planes be grounded and any flights already in the air be turned around. Despite this, the Trump administration proceeded with the flights to El Salvador, where the U.S. is paying $20,000 per person annually to house the migrants in a maximum-security prison.
Boasberg said during a Friday hearing that 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,” Boasberg claimed, apparently brushing aside the president’s “terrorist” designation.
Homan on Sunday said the administration is going to “continue to arrest public safety threats, national security threats” and “continue to deport them from the United States.” He added of the judge: “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.”
