President Donald Trump, just over 100 days after being an oath, questioned whether he had the duty to defend the constitution and the right of the fifth amendment to due process, since he expressed his frustration in the judicial rejection of his effort of mass deportation.
During a Great Scope Interview With NBC News “Meet the Press” Kristen Welker, Trump was asked if he agreed with Secretary of State Framework Rubio that citizens and non -citizens have the right to due process.
“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.”
Welker said that the fifth amendment, which establishes in part that “no person” will be “deprived of life, freedom or property, without due legal process,” he says so much.
“I don’t know,” Trump repeated. “It seems that I could say that, but if you are talking about it, then we would have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million tests. We have thousands of people who are some murders and some drug traffickers and some of the worst people on earth, some of the worst more dangerous people on earth, and I was chosen to get them out of here and the courts are preventing me from doing so.”
When he was asked for the last time, as, as president, he needed to defend the Constitution, Trump again diverted.
“I don’t know. I have to answer saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers who work for me, and obviously they will follow what the Supreme Court said,” in what has become a new standard response in the interviews when they face similar questions about what the law requires what you do.
Legal experts told ABC News that the fifth amendment does not make any distinction between citizens. The Supreme Court has argued that illegal immigrants receive due process under the fifth and fourteenth amendments.
President Donald Trump talks to journalists at the South lawn of the White House, on May 4, 2025 in Washington.
Katopodis/getty images
“Even Judge Scalia, for whom President Trump has expressed a great admiration, acknowledged that the clear language of the fifth amendment clearly provides each” person “, not only US citizens, they are entitled to the protections of due process,” said Michael Gerhardt, an expert in constitutional law of the University of North Carolina, to ABC News.
The scalia ruling in 1993 in which he wrote was well established that the fifth amendment is entitled to aliens to due legal process in deportation procedures “was referenced in a recent order of the Supreme Court that requires detained migrants to be given” reasonable time “to challenge their removal.
“President Trump’s failure to recognize that he made an oath to support and defend the Constitution is not precedents in the history of the United States,” said Gerhardt. “Most of the presidents have not been lawyers, but each president, apart from Trump, has acknowledged that all federal officials, including the president, have the duty to maintain the Constitution.”
Trump, with his right hand raised, lent oath on January 20 as prescribed by article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.
“Donald John Trump I swear solemnly that I will faithfully execute the office of the president of the United States, and the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States,” Trump said during his inauguration.
In another escalation of his confrontation with the courts, Trump later told the journalists on Sunday that he would seek to appoint the judges who will not challenge their deportation plan.
“I mean, we need judges who will not demand judgments for each illegal immigrant,” Trump said while taking questions about Air Force One. “We have millions of people who have entered here illegally, and we cannot have a judgment for each person. That would be millions of tests.”
Immigration issues are treated routinely at a limited hearing or other judicial procedures before an immigration judge, not a complete judgment as Trump suggests, experts say. These administrative judges are employees of the Department of Justice.
“It is a minimal due process, but provides due process,” said David Leopold, lawyer and former president of the American Immigration Association.
Trump’s Sunday comments were quickly criticized by Democrats and other critics, who pointed it out as what they said it was another example of Trump’s contempt for constitutional limits.
“This is as anti -American as it seems,” wrote Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer in X.
Republican senator Rand Paul also delayed that “following the Constitution is not a suggestion.”
“It is a guide force for all of us who work in the name of the American people. Do you agree?” Paul wrote in X.
“It is shocking that a fun president treats the Constitution as if it were an inconvenience,” Leopold said.
“We cannot assume that the government is a judge, jury and executioner,” said Leopold. “That is not what this country was founded. That is what is an authoritarian country. We are not an authoritarian country. We are a constitutional republic.”
