President Donald Trump is trying to sell a promise not to deport U.S. citizens as a shutdown concession even though federal immigration law already forbids it.
The eyebrow-raising offer from the White House came in a March 17 letter sent as part of negotiations to reopen the Department of Homeland Security. In it, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, 64, and White House legislative affairs director James Braid laid out five supposed administration “improvements.”
They included wider use of body cameras, limits on some civil immigration actions at sensitive locations, more detention oversight, visible officer identification, and a promise to stick to existing law and practice by not deporting any U.S. citizen.
The letter, first reported by Punchbowl, also says the administration would codify a policy of not knowingly detaining a U.S. citizen, except where that person is otherwise subject to arrest under state or federal law.
Rather than a meaningful concession, that is the legal floor.
Under U.S. federal law, the people who are “deportable” are “aliens.” Removal proceedings are for deciding the inadmissibility or deportability of an “alien.”
And, as the Supreme Court made clear in 1922, Congress’ deportation power runs to aliens, not citizens, while recognizing that citizenship claims carry serious due process implications.
In plain English, this means the government cannot lawfully deport a U.S. citizen through the immigration system unless citizenship is first stripped or invalidated.
The administration’s promise also clashes with its own record of detaining, deporting, and even killing its own. The Beast reported in January on ChongLy “Scott” Thao, a 56-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen in Minnesota, who was dragged by federal agents from his home in boxer shorts and Crocs into the snow during an immigration raid. Unarmed mom Renee Nicole Good and VA nurse Alex Pretti, both 37, were killed by DHS agents in Minneapolis that month.
And there are direct deportation examples too. The Beast reported in May 2025 that two U.S.-citizen children were deported—under Homan’s border crackdown, no less—to Mexico with their mother. A month later, an 11-year-old U.S. citizen with a rare brain tumor was removed from the country with her undocumented parents pleaded to return for treatment.
Democrats are seeking hard guardrails after Good and Pretti were killed in Minnesota during DHS’ Operation Metro Surge. They want judicial warrants for home entries, a ban on masks for agents, and stricter limits on raids at schools, hospitals, and religious sites. The White House offer does not meet those core demands, according to the Washington Post’s account of the talks.
The shutdown itself has already dragged on for more than four weeks. TSA workers missed a full paycheck last Friday, more than 300 TSA employees have quit, and airport delays have spread as absences climbed. More than 100,000 DHS employees are working without pay.
Trump himself tried to turn that disruption into political leverage on Wednesday, posting on Truth Social that the “DHS SHUTDOWN is causing chaos at the airports” and blaming Democrats for being “totally unreasonable” in their demands. He raged that they were “FULLY TO BLAME” and “must pay a big price” in the midterms.
The president’s message underlined the administration’s strategy, which is to use the travel misery caused by the four-weeks-plus impasse to pressure Democrats publicly while offering little on the due-process and accountability demands actually holding up a deal.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told Punchbowl that Democrats are “trying to move a little bit,” but added that Trump, 79, and the White House have “got to get serious.”
The Daily Beast contacted the White House and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment. Both were asked why the promise not to deport US. citizens even had to be made.
DHS referred questions to the White House. A White House source said the inclusion was “a specific ask by Democrats and the letter was specifically addressing Democrat demands. As the letter makes clear, this is existing law and practice.”
