Donald Trump has not confirmed his intention to uphold the due process rights enshrined in the US Constitution.
In a recent interview, the US President also noted that he does not believe it is necessary to use military force to turn Canada into the “51st state” of the US and spoke less confidently about his ability to run for a third term in the White House.
The remarks came during a wide-ranging and aggressive interview on NBC's Meet The Press as the Republican president's efforts to quickly move forward with his plans have faced significant public resistance as he enters the 100-day mark of his second presidency, according to a recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Mr Trump has made clear that he has no intention of abandoning his agenda, which he says won significant support from voters when he was elected in November.
The interview with NBC's Kristen Welker was recorded Friday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and aired Sunday.
Left-wing critics have tried to argue that Mr. Trump is undermining due process principles in the United States, particularly in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was living in Maryland when he was wrongly deported to El Salvador and jailed incommunicado.
Mr Trump has claimed that Mr Abrego Garcia is a member of a dangerous transnational gang and is trying to use the case as a precedent for his campaign against illegal immigration, despite a Supreme Court ruling that the administration must work to return Mr Abrego Garcia to the United States.
When asked whether U.S. citizens and non-citizens have the right to due process under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, the president declined to answer.
“I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know,” Mr. Trump said when Welker pressed her further.
The Fifth Amendment guarantees “due process of law,” meaning that a person has certain rights when facing criminal prosecution. The Fourteenth Amendment states that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Mr Trump said he had “excellent lawyers… and they will certainly follow the direction of the Supreme Court.”
He stressed that he insists on the deportation of “some of the most dangerous and horrible people on Earth”, but the courts are preventing this.
“I was elected to get rid of them, but the courts did not
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
