From the day he came down the escalator to announce his candidacy for the White House, President Donald Trump has had one go-to issue in his political playbook: immigration. He rode it to the White House in 2016 and again in 2024. He has now ridden it into a major confrontation with the courts.
Trump claims unfettered presidential power on immigration
The president’s deportations have created a clash between the rule of law and due process, and his assertions of presidential power and resistance to challenges by federal judges.
April 20, 2025
Analysis by Dan Balz
The battle has been building for weeks, a clash over the rule of law and due process vs. the Trump administration’s assertions of presidential power and its resistance to challenges by federal district court judges.
A sharply worded ruling Thursday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit that went against the administration did not overstate the gravity of the matter when it said: “Now the branches [of government] come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around.”
Trump uses immigration as a cudgel and a shield. He pummeled former president Joe Biden and former vice president Kamala Harris in the last election after Biden allowed the U.S.-Mexico border to be overrun with undocumented immigrants and was slow to recognize the severity of the problem, politically and otherwise. When other problems arise — think controversy over his tariffs — Trump seeks safe harbor in immigration enforcement.
Trump has moved to deliver on a campaign pledge to deport all undocumented immigrants living in the United States. The effort has delivered less than promised in terms of the number of deportations, but more controversy that advertised in its implementation. It has revealed the lengths to which the administration will go to invoke the powers of the president over the judicial branch.
The most prominent examples involve the case of Kilmar Abrego García, a Maryland migrant who the government admits was “mistakenly” sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, and another case in which the administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants despite a federal district judge’s order.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis has ordered the administration to facilitate Abrego García’s return from El Salvador. The administration has resisted, claiming it has no power to do so. In turn, the administration has been admonished repeatedly for its recalcitrance — directly and forcefully by Xinis, gently by a respectful Supreme Court and as bluntly as could be stated by the appellate court.
In the other case, Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg of D.C. said last week that he would begin proceedings to determine whether the administration should be charged with criminal contempt for its defiance of his ruling not to remove Venezuelan migrants from the country.
The battle over immigration is both political and legal. As a political issue, Trump has operated with the confidence that comes in knowing that public opinion has been generally on his side. Only in some specific instances, particularly the decision to separate families during his first term, has public opinion turned against him.
Biden and Harris misjudged the issue when they came to office. Reacting to Trump’s first-term policies, Democrats de-emphasized border enforcement in favor of what they said were more humane policies. The costly shift resulted in a wave of immigrants, many seeking asylum legally, many arriving illegally. Trump has highlighted enforcement without humanity.
The Biden administration failed to recognize the shift in public opinion that had occurred since Trump came on the scene — or was indifferent to it. When Trump announced his candidacy in the summer of 2015, 40 percent of Americans said immigration should be kept at its current levels, 25 percent said it should be increased and 34 percent said it should be decreased, according to polling by the Gallup organization.
By the summer of 2024, as Trump was in the thick of the presidential campaign, 25 percent said the levels should stay the same, 16 percent said they should be increased and 55 percent said they should be decreased. The percentage of Americans who said they were “very dissatisfied” with the level of immigration jumped from 25 percent in 2021 to 43 percent in 2024.
Trump has made a rhetorical hash of the facts. He has exaggerated the number of undocumented migrants generally accepted as living in the United States. He has lied about what other countries have done. He said Mexico would pay for a border wall. During a debate with Harris, he said Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating the cats and dogs of local residents, a statement denied by city officials. And on and on.
In some cases, he has used facts to his advantage, seizing on cases where undocumented immigrants have committed violent crimes, including murder. He has, however, used those examples to exaggerate the overall level of crime attributed to migrants. He has employed fear as part of the weaponization process.
Today, public opinion is generally with Trump on his initiative to deport vast numbers of undocumented immigrants. Only a relatively small minority oppose deporting those with criminal records, while most oppose deporting those who have lived in the United States for 15 or 20 or more years and never been arrested.
His plan to round up and deport a million undocumented immigrants has fallen behind schedule. His White House has put added pressure on authorities to step up their pace. Immigration czar Tom Homan has complained that he needs more resources to get the job done. Congress is preparing to comply. In their reconciliation packages, the House is including $90 billion for immigration enforcement, and the Senate $175 billion.
The headline on a recent article about the funding in the Atlantic reads: “We’re About to Find Out What Mass Deportation Really Looks Like.” Meanwhile, the administration will be fighting with the courts over what it has already done.
Abrego García came to the United States illegally at age 16, fleeing gang violence. He has been here 14 years, is married to a U.S. citizen and has three children. Though still undocumented, he was given some protection by an immigration judge, who in 2019 ruled that Abrego García could not be deported to El Salvador because of threats of persecution there.
Despite that, he was picked up on March 12 and on March 15 sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a megaprison. Administration officials have claimed he is a member of the MS-13 gang, which has been declared a terrorist organization. They have provided no real evidence to back up the claim that he is a member of the gang.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), who traveled to El Salvador this past week and met with Abrego García on Thursday, said upon his return that the Maryland man told him he has been traumatized by the experience and worries about his family. Among his children is a 5-year-old son with autism. Van Hollen also reported that Abrego García was recently transferred to a different detention center.
Administration officials have admitted that Abrego García was deported “mistakenly,” calling it “an administrative error,” but have said they lack the power to bring him back even as they declare all power over foreign policy matters.
When Xinis ordered the administration to enable his return to the United States, Trump officials appealed. The case went to the Supreme Court, which on April 10 issued a ruling in support of her order to “facilitate and effectuate” his return.
But the high court was careful in its wording, urging Xinis to clarify her “directive with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.” Trump administration officials seized on that language to claim that the district court judge has no power to tell them what to do in this case.
Xinis has said that she plans to force officials to testify under oath as to the steps they have or have not taken. When the government sought a stay, claiming that she was disregarding the Supreme Court’s directive for deference to the executive branch, the appellate court issued its fiery denial.
“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is foundational of our constitutional order,” the three-judge panel said, in a ruling written by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a conservative jurist appointed by President Ronald Reagan.
The ruling goes on to say: “Further it [the government] claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
If this is the posture of the administration, the ruling asks, what assurances are there that this executive branch will not later claim the power to deport American citizens or to “train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?”
The ruling noted that it is “all too easy to see an incipient crisis” but appealed to the administration to demonstrate its commitment to the rule of law. If Trump pursues its current path, the judges wrote, “The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.”
The choice before the administration could not be stated more clearly — or more consequentially. Does this president believe in the rule of law or does he believe he has unfettered power to act as he wishes?