Adam Serwer writes:

One thing that could be said about many—and possibly all—of the more than 100 men removed from the United States by the Trump administration under the archaic Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is that Donald Trump has been convicted of more crimes than they have.

Trump, after all, was convicted of 34 felony counts by a jury of his peers in New York City for faking business records in order to cover up his hush-money payment to the adult-film actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. His administration has acknowledged in court that many of the men deported to a gulag in El Salvador “do not have criminal records in the United States.” Many appear to not have criminal records elsewhere either.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump and his advisers loudly declared that they would engage in a “mass deportation” of undocumented criminals. Many Americans heard criminals and seem to have assumed that innocent people would not be targeted. But the reality of Trump’s immigration project is that a “criminal” is anyone the administration wants to deport, regardless of whether they have committed a crime. There’s been no earnest attempt to prove that these people did anything wrong; no deference to the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees that no “person” can be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Its protections are supposed to restrain the government and do not solely apply to citizens. Even so, immigration law is extraordinarily deferential to the federal government when it comes to these kinds of deportations—so deferential that if the Trump administration had solid evidence of gang involvement, deporting these men through a more routine process could have been straightforward. [Continue reading…]