A CNN anchor grilled a top-ranking House Republican on Sunday over whether Congress would sit by and allow the Trump administration to continue with its mass deportation strategy if American citizens started being targeted.
Though it’s illegal to deport US citizens, President Donald Trump has raised the possibility on several occasions in recent weeks. During a White House visit with El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele last week, the US commander-in-chief urged the leader of a Central American country — with the cameras rolling — to expand a notorious mega-prison used to house gang members and other hardened criminals in order to house Americans.
In other instances, Trump has proposed such a punishment for demonstrators who vandalise or commit arson at Tesla dealerships over the left’s anger with its CEO, Elon Musk.
On Sunday, CNN’s Dana Bash interviewed House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, the third-highest ranking Republican in the House of Representatives. She pressed Emmer repeatedly over whether he, in his capacity as an attorney as well as a lawmaker, believed that Trump had the legal or constitutional authority to deport American citizens if they were convicted of violent crimes.
Three times, Emmer refused to directly answer Bash’s question. Instead, he pivoted each time to what he said the administration was really “focused on” doing – “removing those that do not have legal status in this country that have proven to be the worst of the worst.”
Bash repeatedly tried to get him to directly answer the question, noting that the president himself had raised the prospect: “I just want to give you one more chance to say whether or not you’re okay with US citizens [being deported],” she prodded the congressman.
Emmer did not budge in his replies.
“The issue that we’re dealing with is we’ve got a president who wants to protect US citizens from violence, from crime, and having their children solicited, murdered, et cetera, versus Democrats who seem to want to protect illegal aliens in this country, for whatever reason.”
On NBC’s Meet the Press, Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana had a more direct answer to the same question.
“No, ma’am. Nor should it be considered appropriate or moral,” the senator told moderator Kristen Welker about the prospect of deporting US citizens or housing criminals in other countries.
“We have our own laws,” he said. “We have the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. We shouldn’t send prisoners to foreign countries in my judgment.”
News service AZPM reported on Friday that a 19-year-old man with American citizenship, Jose Hermosillo, was held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention for more than a week after being detained on the street in Tuscon, Arizona, by officers who did not believe him when he told them he was a US citizen. Court documents indicate that ICE agents stated that Hermosillo admitted to entering the US illegally, but he says he did not cross the border at all. He was released from detention on Thursday after family members provided identification to a court, and his case was dismissed.
His relatives later told reporters that Hermosillo likely would have been deported soon afterwards had they not been able to provide the documents in time.
Aside from the very real possibility of US citizens being accidentally swept up in the president’s mass deportation campaign, Trump has also repeatedly raised the prospect of levying it as a punishment for Americans.
“I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people,” the president said on Thursday during his meeting with Bukele.
“I would only do according to the law,” Trump also said. “I have suggested that, you know, ‘Why should it stop just at people who cross the border illegally?’ We have some horrible criminals, American-grown and born.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the idea at a subsequent news briefing, but was unable to vouch for its legality.
“The president has said if it’s legal, right, if there is a legal pathway to do that. He’s not sure. We are not sure if there is,” she told reporters. “It’s an idea that he has simply floated and has discussed very publicly in the effort of transparency.”
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