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The president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, talks about immigration in the Eisenhower executive office building in Washington. EFE / EPA / Jim Lo Scalzo
The president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, talks about immigration in the Eisenhower executive office building in Washington. EFE / EPA / Jim Lo Scalzo

Is the immediate deportation of immigrants really possible?

After a controversial message from President Donald Trump on Twitter, many wonder if the government can really deprive immigrants of due process before…

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Just days after suspending his measures to separate immigrant families detained at the border, President Donald Trump has returned to the fray with his most successful campaign message so far: hard hand and deportation.

On Sunday, the president attacked the judicial system through Twitter saying that "we cannot allow all of these people to invade our country," he wrote while on his way to play golf in Virginia. "When someone comes in, we must immediately, with no judges or court cases, bring them back from where they came."

The presidential comments echo the new policy of "zero tolerance" implemented by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that seems to have given an open letter to the government to sanction the immigrant community and try to overcome the constitutional impediments to the violation of human rights.

In spite of the great wave of protests that have arisen as a result of the more than 2,000 children separated from their families upon entering the country without documents, Trump insists on maintaining a rhetoric that satisfies his followers, especially in view of the mid-term elections this November.

Instead of conciliating, the president has preferred to go "on the offensive," according to the New York Times. The president has "complained to aides about why he could not just create an overarching executive order to solve the problem," the report continues. "Aides have had to explain to the president why a comprehensive immigration overhaul is beyond the reach of his executive powers."

And the fact is that the U.S. president's Napoleonic complex overcomes his knowledge of the rule of law.

Subsequently, he added to his thread on Twitter that "our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Our immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all the people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years. Immigration must be based on merit."

But in the United States, the legal system is not that simple.

While there have been cases of immigration detention where the right to a fair trial has not been granted, NYU law professor Adam Cox explained to the Times, the 5th and 14th amendments of the Constitution ensure the right to this requirement to anyone, including undocumented or misnamed "illegal" people.

The 5th Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: " No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Although the Constitution is quite clear, the Trump administration has tried since its inception to "draw" or "modify" certain statutes that allow accelerating the process of deportation, arguing the saturation of the courts and detention centers.

During the implementation of the "zero tolerance" policy, the government dismissed the 1997 decree known as the Flores Agreement, which prohibited the detention of immigrant families for more than 20 consecutive days.

Officials have also tried to "expand the terms" of a 1996 statute that "allows immigration officials to quickly deport undocumented immigrants as well as those whose documentation is suspected of being fraudulent," the Times continued.

In April, Sessions gave the green light to a procedure of "pressure" on immigration judges "through the assessment by quotas" of their performance when processing immigrants.

While the document claimed to "respect due process," the attorney general's intention is to accelerate the resolution of more than 600,000 cases accumulated in the Executive Office for Immigration Review and, consequently, establish a speedy deportation procedure.

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