GOP lawmakers unnerved by Trump’s intensifying fight with judiciary

Republican lawmakers are feeling uncomfortable about President Trump’s escalating fight with the federal judiciary, which intensified in recent weeks because of the administration’s handling of a Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador and the FBI’s high-profile arrest of a Milwaukee County judge.

They say that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was deported to a Salvadoran prison because of an oversight, deserves due process, though they want to avoid a direct fight with the White House over the charged issue.

Republicans also say the photo FBI Director Kash Patel posted on social media of Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan was “shocking,” even though they say she should face consequences if she broke the law.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is up for reelection next year, said she found it “troubling” that a federal judge found that the Trump administration did not give Abrego Garcia due process before sending him to the notorious CECOT megaprison in El Salvador.

“To me, we have a federal judge that found that there was not due process and that is very troubling to me,” Collins said. “Initially, the administration said that a mistake was made. They seemed to have backed off that.

“That’s why you have due process, to find out what the facts are.”

U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis wrote in an April 4 decision there were “no legal grounds whatsoever” for Abrego Garcia’s “arrest, detention, or removal.”

Harvie Wilkinson, appellate judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, wrote in a mid-April decision that the Trump administration was “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.”

Those sternly worded judicial decisions are leaving Republican on Capitol Hill uneasy about the administration’s growing tensions with the courts.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said Abrego Garcia deserves due process under the Constitution even though he is not a United States citizen and urged the administration to respect the courts’ rulings.

“There’s due process,” she said. “It’s not the same due process that you and I would have, but he does deserve due process, and that’s what we do.”

She said most of her colleagues also believe the Constitution guarantees no person residing in the United States should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

The Supreme Court later upheld Xinis’s ruling that the Trump administration should “facilitate” the release of Abrego Garcia and ensure his case is handled as though he was not deported in the first place.

Xinis accused the administration on April 22 of not complying with her ruling — and the Supreme Court’s order upholding it.

“For weeks, defendants have sought refuge behind vague and unsubstantiated assertions of privilege, using them as a shield to obstruct discovery and evade compliance with this court’s orders,” she wrote.

Asked whether the administration’s lawyers are properly heeding courts’ orders related to the case, Murkowski said they “are getting as close to the edge as they safely can.”

“Hopefully they don’t ever cross” that edge, she said.

The controversial deportation case caused a tense moment at a town hall meeting attended by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R) in Iowa earlier this month.

The 91-year-old senator got into a pointed exchange with a man in the audience who demanded, “Are you going to bring that guy back from El Salvador?” drawing applause.

When Grassley said he wouldn’t intervene, his interlocutor demanded: “Why not?”

Another attendee at Grassley’s town hall event accused the administration of ignoring the Supreme Court.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another member of the Judiciary Committee, who is up for reelection in 2026, said the administration moved too fast in deporting Abrego Garcia and made a mistake.

“That’s what happens when you move too quickly. Clearly, a lot of the Venezuelan gang members — I’m glad they’re [in El Salvador] and I’m glad they’re not here, they’re dangerous, they were illegally present,” he said.

Tillis noted that Abrego Garcia entered the country illegally but said “the mistake [the administration] made was including him in that movement of the Venezuelan gang members.”

He said Abrego Garcia should have been deported “but not accidentally sent to a prison.”

“That was a foot fault,” referring to a tennis rules infraction.

He said immigrants lacking permanent legal status in the country deserve due process, but he said millions of migrants come into the country illegally knowing “they’re flooding the zone” and are unlikely to be deported because the immigration courts are so backlogged.

Rule-of-law conservatives and libertarians, a key faction of the GOP, have criticized what they view as the lack of due process in Abrego Garcia’s case and the administration’s reluctance to facilitate his return to the United States, despite a ruling from the Supreme Court.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said the Constitution clearly gives all “persons” living in the United States due process under the law.

“The Constitution says persons, it doesn’t say citizens,” he said. “The question is has [Abrego Garcia] had due process, which is a factual dispute.”

He noted the Trump administration has argued Abrego Garcia has already had two trials and would be deported if he were to return from El Salvador.

Another bombshell dropped late last week when the FBI arrested Dugan, a Milwaukee County circuit judge on the charge of obstructing justice, which Patel touted by posting a photo of her in handcuffs.

Dugan, 65, who has served nine years on the bench, is accused of steering an immigrant without permanent legal status out of her courtroom through a side door to avoid immigration officials who were waiting to apprehend him.

Collins said she was “shocked to see that picture” but acknowledged she doesn’t know much about the case against the judge.

“We need to respect the judiciary in this country, it’s a coequal branch of government at the federal level,” she said while noting Dugan is a county appellate judge.

GOP lawmakers say the judge appears to have interfered in a law enforcement operation and may well have broken the law, but they’re disconcerted by public optics of federal law enforcement shackling a local judge over a dispute related to the administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said the picture of the judge in handcuffs “caught my attention.”

“I’m not sure why they did it the way that they did it,” he said. “But if she was in violation of a federal law, then she is subject to arrest like anyone else.”

Asked about how the arrest of a judge looks politically, Rounds said the administration wanted to send a message but added the image of a judge being led by federal officers on a perp walk in cuffs raises questions.

“Why would you do that rather than simply calling them and telling them they have to show up” at court to respond to federal charges, he said. “Clearly, because they want to send a message to everyone else out there.”

Senate Democrats slammed Dugan’s arrest as an attack on the judicial system.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) called it a “gravely serious and drastic move” that “threatens to breach” the nation’s constitutional separation of powers.

Republican senators this week said the FBI’s tactics might have been “heavy-handed” even if the judge deserves to be punished for interfering in a law enforcement operation.

Leading Republican lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), have urged Trump to respect the federal judiciary as a co-equal separate branch of government and to heed its rulings.

He told reporters earlier this year the federal courts “have a very valid role and need to be listened to and heard in the process.”

Thune on Monday said “you never want to see a judge get arrested, but it sounds like this judge was obstructing justice, which is breaking the law.”