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New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman says President Donald Trump’s administration has “undermined their own case” that they would need to suspend habeas corpus due to a supposed immigrant invasion, given that they’ve sealed the U.S.-Mexico border.
Enshrined in the Constitution, habeas corpus shields people from unlawful detention with the right to appear in front of a judge. Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller said Friday it “can be suspended in a time of invasion,” and that doing so is “an option” they’re “actively looking at.”
Haberman shredded the idea during an appearance Friday on CNN’s “The Source.”
“I don’t think any court has agreed that the U.S. is under invasion,” she told host Kaitlan Collins. “That is how it has been used in the past to suspend habeas corpus, regionally. And when Abraham Lincoln did it, it was actually quite controversial, number one.”
“Number two,” Haberman argued, is “this absolutely would be challenged.”
“I don’t know how you would call it: just for migrants,” she continued. “And the border is sealed, so they have really undermined their own case, in a lot of ways. I think they do have some running room, politically, on this, but they may run out of it at some point.”
Trump launched mass deportations shortly after assuming office earlier this year and declared a national emergency at the southern border. He has since invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up deportations, only to be stymied by the courts.
Haberman noted Friday that several judges have already said the administration is “misreading” the wartime act they’ve invoked for deportations, and that Trump’s success in closing the border will unwittingly be his biggest hurdle in trying to suspend habeas corpus.
“They did it almost immediately when they came in,” Haberman told Collins about closing the border. “They almost were too quick for their own good, because now they have continued to try to do other things and they keep stepping on their own success.”
Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press
The Department of Homeland Security said Monday that people who are in the U.S. illegally will receive $1,000 if they voluntarily deport themselves. As for a potential suspension of habeas corpus, Haberman hopes that, at worst, it’s merely a scare tactic.
“Some of this might just be fear,” she said Friday. “A, it’s a way to intimidate the courts, which we have seen Trump and Stephen Miller do a lot of. They have been criticizing judges routinely and repeatedly. It also might be to scare migrants and to get migrants to leave.”
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