US eyes suspending right to court challenge for detainees

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stand near a gate at Delaney Hall, a newly converted immigrant detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey May 7, 2025. Delaney Hall has the ability to hold over 1,000 people, and the detention facility, privately owned by The GEO Group, holds a contract with the federal government to house people arrested by ICE. — Photo by Agence France-Presse

A senior White House official said Friday that President Donald Trump, as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown, is looking at suspending habeas corpus, the right of a person to challenge their detention in court.

“The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters.

“So it’s an option we’re actively looking at,” Miller said. “A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants and has repeatedly referred to their presence in the United States as an “invasion.”

Since taking office in January, Trump has been seeking to step up deportations, but his efforts have met with pushback from multiple federal courts which have insisted that migrants targeted for removal receive due process.

Among other measures, the Republican president invoked an obscure wartime law in March to summarily deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador.

READ: US judge blocks deportation of PH, other Asian migrants to Libya

Several federal courts have blocked further deportations using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and the Supreme Court also weighed in, saying migrants subject to deportation under the AEA must be given an opportunity to legally challenge their removal in court.

The AEA was last used to round up Japanese-Americans during World War II and was previously invoked during the War of 1812 and World War I.

Suspending habeas corpus could potentially allow the administration to dispense with individual removal proceedings and speed up deportations, but the move would almost certainly be met with stiff legal challenges and end up in the Supreme Court.

It has been suspended only rarely in US history, most notably by president Abraham Lincoln during the 1861-1865 Civil War and in Hawaii after the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor./das