When Welker tried to point out what the Fifth Amendment said, Trump suggested that such a process would slow him down too much.
“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,” he said. “We have thousands of people that are — some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.”
“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he added.
“But even given those numbers that you’re talking about, don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” Welker asked.
“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”
President Donald Trump said he was unsure whether people in the U.S. are entitled to due process rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution as his administration pushes aggressively to deport immigrants who are in the country illegally and other non-citizens.
Trump made his comments during an interview conducted on Friday that was set to air on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker.” Welker asked Trump whether he agreed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said last month that “of course” all people in the U.S. are entitled to due process, which generally requires the government to provide notice and a hearing before taking certain adverse legal actions.
“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump said, adding that such a requirement would mean “we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials.”
Trump added that his lawyers “are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”