Marco Rubio has accidentally diverged from the party line on Sunday by admitting that anyone in America should be entitled to a fair hearing before being deported.
The US Secretary of State told MSNBC’s Meet The Press that ‘of course’ everyone should have their day in court – before realizing his error and quickly backtracking.
‘Yes, of course,’ Rubio said in response to the host’s question about whether all citizens and non-citizens on US soil are entitled to due process.
‘But let me tell you, on immigration standing, the laws are very specific,’ he added, appearing to recognize his mistake and immediately back-pedaling.
‘If you’re in this country unlawfully, you have no right to be here and you must be removed, that’s what the law says.’
It comes after Trump tried to justify his rapid mass deportations scheme by saying it would take too long to try each alleged criminal in court.
‘We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,’ he wrote.
‘We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country… If we don’t get these criminals out of our Country, we are not going to have a Country any longer.’
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump could use a rarely-invoked wartime powers law to rapidly deport alleged gang members such as people affiliated with the notorious Venezuelan MS-13 group.
However, the ruling came with a caveat that deportees must be given the chance to challenge their removal.
‘The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs,’ the justices wrote in the ruling released earlier this month.
‘The only question is which court will resolve that challenge,’ they added.
Trump celebrated the ruling as a ‘great day for justice in America’.
‘The Supreme Court has upheld the Rule of Law in our Nation by allowing a President, whoever that may be, to be able to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself,’ he wrote on Truth Social.
Attorney General Pam Bondi similarly hailed the court’s decision as ‘a landmark victory for the rule of law’.
‘The Department of Justice will continue fighting in court to make America safe again,’ she said in a social media post.
At least 137 people have been deported by the Trump administration under the Alien Enemies Act so far.
The wartime law grants the US president sweeping powers to order the detention and deportation of natives or citizens of an ‘enemy’ nation.
It was created in 1798 when the US was concerned about a potential conflict with France, and it was last used during the Second World War.
The latest controversial deportation to hit the headlines involves a two-year-old US citizen and her mother who were removed on Tuesday.
Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela and her young daughter, identified only as VML in court documents, were sent to Honduras after they attended an immigration check-in at the New Orleans office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Louisiana.
The case came under the spotlight after US District Judge Terry Doughty expressed a ‘strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process’.
Doughty has ordered a hearing for May 16 to delve into whether the Trump administration violated the toddler’s constitutional rights.