‘What Have We Come to as a Country?’ Former White House Ethics Lawyer Excoriates Trump Over Deportations Without Due Process
A former White House ethics lawyer slammed President Donald Trump and his administration for deporting hundreds of immigrants with little or no due process.
Last week, the administration sent more than 250 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador, where they are being held in the notorious CECOT prison camp. Trump has insisted that all of the deportees are members of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang, but the lack of any hearings on that question has called the claim into question. An attorney for one of the deported men – a professional soccer player named Jerce Reyes Barrios – said his client was arrested because of a tattoo that U.S. authorities mistakenly believed was gang-related. The lawyer said his client has no criminal record.
The deportations happened last Saturday as a hearing was underway in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., where Judge James Boasberg ordered the government to turn any planes carrying migrants around back to the U.S.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice ignored the order, claiming that because Boasberg’s order was verbal, they didn’t think it counted. The men sent to El Salvador were deported in expedited fashion after Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which requires the president to issue a proclamation. That has been done just three times in U.S. history: during the War of 1812 and both world wars. Critics have noted that the U.S. is not currently at war and that the rarely-invoked act wasn’t even used after the Sept. 11 attacks. Oddly, Trump claimed last week he did not actually sign the proclamation, which, if true, would render the deportations ipso facto illegal.
Appearing on Monday’s AC360 on CNN, Norm Eisen, a former Ethics lawyer in the Obama White House, went off on Trump and the administration’s due process-free deportations, which are being appealed before the D.C. Circuit. On Monday, Judge Patricia Millett observed that the U.S. afforded captured Nazis more rights than the deported Venezuelans.
“I think history, precedent, the Constitution, and human decency all point in one direction,” Eisen told host Anderson Cooper. “There’s now evidence, in fact, the lawyer for the ACLU, the very capable Lee Gelernt, pointed out that many, perhaps most a majority of these people – the evidence indicates – are not gang members. Anderson, what have we come to as a country if innocent people are being deported to a dark site in a foreign country without any due process whatsoever?”
Eisen went on to note he filed a brief on behalf of conservatives who opposed the deportations on due process grounds.
“So, hopefully the court will see it that way,” he added. “And in either event, it is headed for the Supreme Court.”
Watch above via CNN.
