Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff and main henchman, has never seen a constitutional right that he doesn’t want to squash. Miller’s latest foray into the desecration of the Constitution centers on the Trump administration’s plans to possibly suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus as it relates to further deportations. This is the constitutional right of an individual to challenge their detention in court.
This right also extends to noncitizens held within the United States. Trump and Miller have, de facto, already put this into motion by refusing to comply with a judge’s order to turn planes around that were full of Venezuelan immigrants being deported to Salvadoran prisons. And refusing to return one of these individuals, Kilmar Armando Abrego García, despite a judicial order.
Miller and Trump’s Disregard for the Law
Miller claims that the Constitution allows a president to suspend Habeas Corpus in the event of an invasion. Speaking to this point, he said.
“The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus could be suspended in time of invasion. So that’s an option we’re actively looking at.”
The Trump administration has emphatically argued that the U.S. is facing an “invasion” that requires the deportation of undocumented migrants under the Alien Enemies Act. This law allows for the deportation of noncitizens with little or no due process.
The Writ of Habeas Corpus has been suspended four times since the United States adopted the Constitution. The suspensions occurred throughout the nation during the Civil War, in multiple South Carolina counties ruled by the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction, in two provinces in the Philippines during an insurrection in 1905, and in post-Pearl Harbor Hawaii.
The Courts Fight Back
The courts have been doing their best to rain on Miller and Trump’s parade. Despite the litany of lawsuits that have been filed in response to the illegal executive orders of this administration, the courts have not lost sight of the rights of detainees. The administration keeps losing that argument in the courts. On Tuesday, a federal judge informed the White House that they had failed to prove the presence of an “invasion” or other conflict that would allow it to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants.
Georgetown University Law Center professor Steve Vladeck commented on this in his Substack column.
“There is near-universal” legal consensus that only Congress can suspend habeas corpus, “and that unilateral suspensions by the President are per se unconstitutional. It’s not the judicial review itself that’s imperiling national security; it’s the possibility that the government might lose. That’s not, and has never been, a viable argument for suspending habeas corpus.”
Miller and Trump Continue Their Onslaught
On Friday, Miller once again put the burden on the judicial branch, suggesting that whether the Trump administration acts to suspend habeas corpus “depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.” The Trump administration has made a sport of opposing judges regarding what they view as unfair and biased rulings against their expanded use of executive authority. In most cases, they have called for the impeachment of judges who disagreed with them.
The president has insisted that his effort to deport undocumented immigrants out of the U.S. is necessary to rapidly remove people he claims are murderers, drug dealers, and other hardened criminals. Trump raised the stakes when asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last weekend whether he believes he needs to uphold the Constitution during his presidency, a key tenet of the oath of office. To this, Trump responded, “I don’t know.”
