Democrats say attacks on migrants preview risks to civil rights for citizens

Critics say President Trump’s aggressive deportations and tightening of immigration law are a precursor to a wider attack on civil rights that could go beyond the targeting of migrants to U.S. citizens.

Trump in recent weeks has used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to send Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador, denying them a chance to challenge assertions they have gang ties.

The administration also has stripped student visas from those involved in protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza — something attorneys for the students say is designed to quash their First Amendment rights.

Democratic lawmakers argue the actions represent a chipping away of fundamental rights and a stepping stone toward authoritarianism.

“I think it is really important that we understand what's going on — the most vulnerable — they target a population that they think that maybe they can win the sympathy of the American people, or of any people, in targeting that particular population,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said during a hearing last week to review a reconciliation package to back Trump's immigration priorities.

“And the idea here is to show that if you can do it to that group of people — and nobody says anything — then you can go further and do it to anybody else,” she said.

“And I think it is very important to recognize that in this moment, they are trying to say that due process does not apply to you if you're an immigrant,” she added before going on to cite Fifth Amendment protections for any action depriving any person of their liberty.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, called it part of the “authoritarian playbook.”

“Every day, the administration uses immigration enforcement as a template to violate and erode our rights and liberties. They round up people in the street and disappear them to the torture prison of a foreign dictator without one iota of due process, sweeping up completely innocent people who have no criminal record and no criminal charges. They strip college and graduate students at American universities of their student visas for writing op-eds the administration disagrees with,” he said during the same hearing.

“If Donald Trump can sweep noncitizens off the street and fly them to a torturer’s prison in El Salvador with no due process, he can do it to citizens too, because if there is no due process, no fair hearing, you have no opportunity to object.”

Republicans have brushed off those concerns, accusing Democrats of caring more about migrants than citizens.

“Over 77 million Americans delivered a resounding Election Day mandate to enforce our immigration laws and mass deport criminal illegal aliens,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told The Hill in a statement.

“The Trump administration’s whole-of-government approach to deliver on that mandate is democracy in action. If Democrats want to die on the hill of fighting for terrorist illegal aliens and foreigners over American citizens, we are happy to dig that grave for them.”

Trump has mused multiple times about sending U.S. citizens to prison in El Salvador — though he has said little about what that process would look like. 

In February, Trump said “it would be a lot less expensive and it would be a great deterrent.”

“I’m just saying if we had a legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,” Trump said. “I don’t know if we do or not, we’re looking at that right now.”

In April Trump said he would be willing to do so for “violent criminals.”

“If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem,” Trump said. “Now, we’re studying the laws right now. [Attorney General Pam Bondi] is studying. If we can do that, that’s good. And I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people. Really bad people. Every bit as bad as the ones coming in.”

Deportations have also already swept up U.S. citizen children removed with their parents. 

Two U.S.-citizen children were deported alongside their mother to Honduras, including a 4-year-old son with Stage 4 cancer who was removed without his medication. Attorneys for another woman deported with her 2-year-old citizen child said she was removed with little time to figure out what to do with her child.

Immigrant advocates have also sounded the alarm over what they say could be a slippery slope to restricting the rights of U.S. citizens.

“We’re seeing the Trump administration really pursuing an attack on core democratic values and using immigration and immigrants as the battleground for that attack. We’re seeing the president attack the right to free speech, the right to a fair day in court, these core American ideals,” Nayna Gupta, policy director with the American Immigration Council, previously told The Hill. 

“They are intentionally attacking those ideas by starting with the immigration system, by weaponizing immigration laws, by resurrecting old wartime authorities, by targeting noncitizens as the first line of attack on these rights. And so while this is very clearly a threat to immigrant communities and noncitizens in our country, it really is a threat to these larger principles and all Americans.”

John Carey, a professor of government at Dartmouth University and the co-founder of Bright Line Watch, which monitors threats to American democracy, said a fixation on immigrants or other marginalized groups is “a pretty staple strategy” of countries backsliding from democracy.

But he also pointed to Trump’s invocation of emergency authorities to undertake a number of actions at the border, as well as the rarely used Alien Enemies Act, a wartime power invoked just three times prior in U.S. history, all during times of combat.

“The appeals to emergency authority are really troubling. … But the claim of an emergency and the claim of a right to exercise extraordinary authorities under that emergency is something that's really familiar throughout Latin America. It's something that has been much more limited, much more rare in the United States,” Carey said, adding that Trump was redefining the term “invasion” to use the Alien Enemies Act to go after purported gang members.

“That is really worrisome to me.”

Trump has argued swift deportations are justified and has attacked the judiciary in the wake of multiple decisions from district courts and the Supreme Court that have halted deportation flights destined for El Salvador.

“The border now is not the emergency. ... The big emergency right now is that we have thousands of people that we want to take out, and we have some judges that want everybody to go to court,” Trump said over the weekend in an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker.

Welker noted that the Fifth Amendment provides a right to due process regardless of their immigration status.

“I don't know. It seems — it might say that, but if you're talking about that, then we'd have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials. We have thousands of people that are some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth,” Trump said.

“And I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it.”

On the First Amendment front, the administration has also defended stripping student visas and work permissions from students and professors who have participated in protests about Israeli actions in Gaza.

“If you are in this country on a student visa and are a participant in those movements, we have a right to deny your visa. I think it would make sense to deny your visa. We’re going to err on the side of caution. We are not going to be importing activists into the United States. They’re here to study. They’re here to go to class. They’re not here to lead activist movements that are disruptive and undermine the — our universities. I think it’s lunacy to continue to allow that,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in March.

A judge last week ordered the release of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student who participated in protests and was arrested as the green card holder reported to an immigration office for his naturalization interview. The decision does not end the Trump administration's efforts to deport him, but frees him from detention while the legal battle continues.

“I am saying it clear and loud. To President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you,” Mahdawi said after leaving the courthouse. 

But Carey said that’s not true elsewhere in academia where in a recent survey, more than half of faculty reported some form of self-censorship.

“About two-thirds of them reported self-censoring. But those rates were higher among both noncitizens and among naturalized citizens than they are among U.S.-born citizens,” he said, noting that students and faculty who have recently been detained or deported have expressed opinions that are “antithetical to the current administration.”

“And the administration seems to be making no bones about the fact that it's that expression of political opinions that is the reason for their detention or deportation.”