Kilmar Abrego Garcia neighborhood in El Salvador
USA TODAY visited Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s home neighborhood in El Salvador to get a better sense of who the man is.
WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump said he does not know whether he’s required to uphold the U.S. Constitution as president in a new interview as he defended his administration’s actions to remove people who are in the country illegally.
Trump’s comments follow the Supreme Court last month saying the Trump administration must “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland sheet metal worker and father of three who was wrongfully deported to an El Salvador prison without receiving a trial.
“I don’t know,” Trump said when asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” by host Kristen Welker whether he needs to uphold the Constitution. “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”
The Trump administration has said it doesn’t need to even request Abrego Garcia’s release from El Salvador, where he’s from originally, because of how the court worded its decision. However, critics have argued such statements show the administration is refusing to obey the nation’s highest court.
“What you said is not what I heard the Supreme Court said,” Trump told Welker. “They have a different interpretation.”
Pressed whether his administration is following the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which says no person “shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” Trump said he wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know. It seems – it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said. “We have thousands of people that are some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.”
Trump has pushed the boundaries of presidential power during the first three-plus months of his second term, bypassing Congress to set policy and arguing that the president ‒ not U.S. district judges ‒ have the final say on nationals security matters.
Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.
Contributing: Aysha Bagchi, USA TODAY