Stephen Colbert raised the alarms Tuesday over the Trump administration’s total disregard for due process.
“[Trump’s] been flying plane-loads of immigrants out of the country without any due process, some of whom he’s accused of being gang members based largely on their tattoos,“ Colbert noted.
He explained further: “ICE isn’t sending these guys back to their home countries. Instead, Trump has been flying them to El Salvador, where they’ve been put in a notorious maximum-security prison.”
The worst part for Colbert, however, was the story of what happened to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal citizen recently deported to the El Salvadoran prison due to an “administrative error.”
“An ‘administrative error’ lands you in an inescapable prison where no one ever hears from you again,” Colbert said.
The late-night host continued, quoting a report from The Atlantic, “Apparently, the man in question had ‘already received protected legal status from an immigration judge,’ and Trump’s lawyers acknowledged that ICE ‘was aware of his protection from removal.‘”
“This is so insane,” Colbert said. “This is so off-the-charts insane that one of Trump administration’s own lawyers texted a reporter covering the story, ‘What. The. F--k.‘”
Colbert hadn’t even reached the darkest part of the story yet. He explained further:
“Let’s just bring him back. No harm, no foul, right? Wrong, because in that same court filing, the Trump administration said ‘the court has no ability to bring him back now that he is in Salvadoran custody,’ arguing that Trump’s ‘primacy in foreign affairs’ outweighs the interests of the deportee and his family.‘”
“If that stands, then it’s goodbye habeas corpus,” Colbert said, referring to the legal term for due process.
“Trump’s primacy outweighs the court’s,“ Colbert said. ”And don’t think that that only applies to folks like this detainee.”
The late-night host warned: “If there’s no due process, we have no idea if any of these people are citizens, meaning every single person on American soil is now at risk of being disappeared, until the day Trump and his goons are finally out of power."
