Trump Is Correct About No Due Process For Aliens

WASHINGTON - May 4, 2025 - PRLog -- President Trump is being sharply criticized for saying "I don't know" when asked whether "everyone who's here, citizens and non-citizens, deserve due process."  When pressed, Trump added that "then we'd have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials" to deport those in the U.S. illegally.

But aliens are not necessarily entitled to full due process protections in all situations.

Due process is not a guarantee of certain trial-type procedural protections, but rather only to the process which is due under the particular circumstances - which in some situations may be very little, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who helped to successfully attack the earlier separation of families by ICE, and proposed a simple way - meeting the demands of both sides - out of the Abrego Garcia quagmire.

Therefore Trump is also correct, at least in a lay sense, that in most cases they are not entitled to a trial, explains the law professor.

Under INA § 235(b)(1), DHS [may] summarily remove aliens  arriving at a designated U.S. port of entry . . . 'without further hearing or review' if they are inadmissible for various reasons (e.g. "lack valid entry documents") . . .  Most aliens subject to expedited removal have thus been apprehended either at a designated port of entry or near the international border when trying to enter, or shortly after entering, the United States unlawfully between ports of entry. . . .  INA § 242(a)(2) generally bars judicial review of an expedited removal order." [emphasis added]

When Trump complained that it would take millions of trials to deport millions of illegal aliens eligible to be deported, he was probably using "trial" in the lay sense of something equivalent to what occurs in a courtroom, but that is not necessarily the case.

Thus the constitutional requirement of due process can in some situations be met by only a brief conversation; with no hearing, formal or even informal, no witnesses, no independent decision maker, and certainly no lawyers.

Immigration agencies can take "administrative notice to establish facts which might otherwise require an evidentiary hearing - e.g., changed circumstances in petitioner's country.

Another way to avoid an immigration or other administrative proceeding is to use the technique of summary judgment.

This summary judgment proceeding is also applied in immigration proceedings.

In summary, whether we like to think so or not, illegal aliens may be entitled under the Constitution to few if any procedural protections.  If that were not the case, it would have been impossible to remove over 270,000 during the last fiscal year, notes Banzhaf.

http://banzhaf.net/   jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com