The Assault on Due Process

For the past several weeks, the Trump administration has been attacking one of the pillars of American democracy—Due Process. They have tried to stay under the radar by targeting noncitizens—from undocumented immigrants to long-term permanent residents—but don’t let them trick you into complacency. If the right to Due Process doesn’t exist for all of us, it exists for none of us.

What is Due Process?

Due Process is the only right guaranteed in our Constitution not once, but twice—in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Both Amendments guarantee that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

“Due process of law” means that when the government seeks to deprive a person of life, liberty, or property, they must first—at a minimum—provide that person with notice, an opportunity to be heard, and the right to have a decision made on the matter by a neutral decisionmaker.

Without this basic process, any person can be accused of anything by any government official and have their life, liberty, or property taken regardless of the facts. Which is exactly what is happening under Trump’s administration.

I emphasize “person” above because the right to Due Process is not limited to citizens—it exists for all persons subject to U.S. law, which includes all human beings on American soil (with the exception of those who have diplomatic immunity). The Constitution clearly sets out which rights are reserved for citizens—the right to vote and the right to run for office. That’s it. All other rights belong to every single person on American soil. And not only is Trump violating many of them—he is bypassing our primary right to Due Process to get away with it.

At present, the Trump administration is targeting two classes of people in his attack on Due Process: undocumented immigrants and noncitizen legal residents.

Undocumented Immigrants

The administration’s most egregious abuse of power perpetrated against undocumented immigrants to date is without question the March 15^th illegal removal of 238 Venezuelans to an El Salvadorian prison in direct violation of a court order. Despite a judge’s demand that the individuals remain in the United States “however that’s accomplished — whether turning around the plane or not,” the administration chose to land planes in El Salvador, a country known for its human rights violations, in order to deliver its cargo to CECOT, a mega-prison known for its human rights violations.

That the administration blatantly defied a court’s direct order is deeply alarming in itself and is yet another sign of the Constitutional crisis in which the country finds itself, but the focus of this post is the violation of the Due Process rights of the human beings sent to El Salvador.

According to the administration, the individuals on the planes were all members of a Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua, and therefore the move to fly them to El Salvador was both legal and justified. However, because none of the individuals were granted Due Process, we have no way of verifying that assertion.

And if the administration’s assertion that they were all violent gang members turned out to be true, then Due Process would have borne that truth out and the individuals would have been deported in accordance with the law. The administration’s desired result would have come to pass (though whether they would have been taken to a foreign mega-prison is another question altogether).

So there was no reason not to grant these individuals Due Process, other than the conscious decision to deprive human beings of their basic human rights, with the clear intent of instilling terror in the broader migrant community. (It’s worth noting that all of the individuals were being securely detained in the United States at the time the administration decided to fly them to El Salvador, so there was no risk of harm to the public by delaying their departure to allow for Due Process, and thus no argument for urgency holds any water.)

In the days since the now infamous flights illegally landed in El Salvador, the administration has continued to deny the public information about the individuals now lost to U.S. jurisdiction, but some of their identities have been discovered by victims’ friends and families who recognized their loved ones in scenes of the snuff films the Trump administration has released. And the most chilling discovery? That many of these men were not members of a Venezuelan gang at all, or even in the U.S. illegally.

One individual is a makeup artist who was fleeing persecution for being a member of the LGBTQ+ community and went through all of the proper channels to seek asylum in this country. Another was flagged by ICE due to a tattoo promoting autism awareness because he has a 15-year-old brother with the diagnosis. These men are now in an El Salvadoran gulag, beyond the jurisdiction of American courts, with no rights and no recourse. All because Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem decided they didn’t deserve Due Process.

Andrys, the LGBTQ+ makeup artist sent to El Salvador

The autism awareness tattoo that sent an innocent man to El Salvador

Noncitizen Legal Residents

The administration is not just denying undocumented immigrants the right to Due Process, but has added noncitizen legal residents to its list of the vulnerable, including long-term permanent residents and visa holders. Their primary target: Students.

At first blush, it appeared the Trump administration was going after students who had the audacity to express views with which the administration disagreed. They started with Mahmoud Khalil, who they claim sympathizes with the terrorist group Hamas and thus poses a danger to U.S. foreign policy (though no evidence of any ties has been provided, and no charges have been filed). Mr. Khalil’s apparent offense was leading some of the Columbia University protests against the genocide being perpetrated on Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli government.

ICE agents forced their way into his campus home, claiming they were arresting him because his visa had been revoked; however, Mr. Khalil is not in the U.S. on a visa—he is a long-term permanent resident. When informed of that fact and presented with corroborating evidence, the ICE agents apparently amended their claim that his residency status was being revoked instead. They then threatened to arrest his wife, who is a U.S. citizen and just days away from giving birth to their first child, if she continued to protest Mr. Khalil’s arrest. After being taken from his New York home, Mr. Khalil’s wife and attorneys were unable to locate him for almost two days before finally being informed he had been removed to a detention facility in Louisiana known for its human rights abuses. While a New York judge has ordered that he not be deported, Mr. Khalil was arrested on March 8^th and remains in custody without any charges filed against him, and therefore no way to exercise his right to Due Process.

Mahmoud Khalil

Since Mr. Khalil’s arrest, other pro-Palestine protestors have been targeted and detained (One fortunately escaped to Canada before ICE could apprehend her). But what’s been making the news this week is the shocking arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, whose only apparent offense was having a byline on an op-ed in her school newspaper in favor of Palestine.

Ms. Ozturk, who has—like Mr. Khalil—had no charges filed against her, was on her way to break her Ramadan fast on Tuesday when she was stopped by half a dozen masked plainclothes ICE agents. They forcibly removed her phone and backpack, handcuffed her, and then forced her into an unmarked van. After being taken, her whereabouts were initially unknown and a court ordered that she not be removed from the state of Massachusetts without its approval; however, it was discovered today that she was taken to the same detention facility in Louisiana as Mr. Khalil in apparent violation of the court order (though ICE claims she was removed from Massachusetts prior to the order going into effect). Like Mr. Khalil, Ms. Ozturk remains in the Louisiana detention facility without any charges filed against her and therefore no way to exercise her right to Due Process.

Rumeysa Ozturk

An even more unsettling arrest occurred in Alabama this week. Before dawn on Tuesday, ICE agents reportedly forcibly entered the home of Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian student studying for his doctorate in mechanical engineering at the University of Alabama, and took him into custody. To date, absolutely no explanation has been found for his apprehension. Not a protest, not an op-ed, not even a Tweet.

Alireza Doroudi

Mr. Khalil and Ms. Ozturk were targeted for their lawful expression of their right to Free Speech.

We don’t yet know why Mr. Doroudi was targeted, other than to instill fear in student visa holders studying all across the country.

The administration claims that the men sent to El Salvador were targeted because Kristi Noem decided they were gang members, but it’s far more likely they were used to send a warning to anyone thinking of seeking asylum in the U.S., and what a chilling warning it was.

What do all of these people have in common? None of them have been granted the right to Due Process. And for the men in El Salvador, it’s more than likely too late to correct this egregious violation of their basic human rights.

If you don’t think this could happen to you, ask yourself how you would stop it if ICE took you off the street? Without Due Process, you wouldn’t have the chance to prove your identity, to prove that you were a citizen. You wouldn’t have any way to defend yourself.

We should all be standing up in outrage at the injustice that has been inflicted on our fellow human beings. But if nothing else, we should stand up for them because one day soon we could very easily find ourselves in their shoes, with no way to prove that we have been wronged.

Trump’s attack on Due Process has focused on immigrants so far. But we’re only two months into his four-year term. He has plenty of time to come for us all. We need to stop him before it’s too late.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/us/politics/trump-venezuelans-deportations-el-salvador.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/us/constitutional-crisis.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/17/g-s1-54206/el-salvador-mega-prison-cecot

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14531405/Andrys-Cedeno-Gil-gay-makeu-artist-migrant-El-Salvador-prison.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/20/deported-because-of-his-tattoos-has-the-us-targeted-venezuelans-for-their-body-art

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gay-venezuelan-makeup-artist-deported_n_67e05688e4b0dbd2dbaf96f5

https://apnews.com/article/columbia-university-mahmoud-khalil-ice-15014bcbb921f21a9f704d5acdcae7a8

https://apnews.com/article/columbia-university-mahmoud-khalil-ice-6964107d218dba43eb995d6dbbe528b1

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/15/nyregion/columbia-student-kristi-noem-video.html

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/27/judge-explanation-tufts-student-rumeysa-ozturk-ice

https://www.vox.com/donald-trump/406199/ice-rumeysa-ozturk-tufts-logoff

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/us/politics/tufts-ice-crackdown.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/university-alabama-doctoral-student-detained-ice-governments-college-c-rcna198320

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/26/us-universities-students-israel-palestine-protests