On Tuesday, Senator James Lankford popped up on CNN’s The Arena and dropped a little truth bomb that some folks on the Left might find hard to swallow: yes, even illegal immigrants get due process—before they’re deported. Shocking, right?
It all kicked off when host Kasie Hunt brought up President Trump’s weekend sit-down on Meet the Press. She tried to stir drama by saying, “President Trump sat down for an extensive interview with Kristen Welker at ‘Meet the Press’ over the weekend. She asked him whether he would uphold the Constitution in providing due process to people who are deported and his answer was not yes. Are you confident that President Trump will uphold the Constitution?”
Lankford, cool as ever, responded, “I am. I think his answer was, I’ve got good attorneys advising me on all those things, and they’re going to make sure they get it right. What’s been confusing on this is some people see due process like us as American citizens, and that’s a right to a jury trial, that’s all those different things. That’s not true for due process for someone who’s not a citizen of the United States. It’s a different process. It’s often just literally what people call an immigration judge, which is not a typical federal judge or a state judge; this is someone that’s in the bureaucracy.”
In other words: calm down. Illegal immigrants aren’t being whisked away in the dead of night without a chance to say a word—but they’re also not entitled to the same courtroom experience as citizens.
Lankford wrapped it up clearly: “So there is a very different process for it, but yes, there is a need to give an opportunity for someone to be able to make an argument before they are removed from the country.”
So yes, due process exists. But let’s not pretend deportation hearings are the same as your average Law & Order episode. There’s a difference between protecting rights and just plain chaos at the border. Lankford’s just saying what the Constitution actually means—something more people in D.C. could try.