Stephen Miller says White House is ‘actively looking at’ suspending habeas corpus

The White House deputy chief of staff told reporters Friday that the Trump administration is “actively looking at” suspending a legal procedure that allows people to challenge a government’s decision to detain them.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters Friday that the Trump administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus — a legal procedure that allows people to challenge a government’s decision to detain them. “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller told reporters Friday. “So it’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.” Suspending habeas corpus would require, under the Constitution, that the country be “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” While it’s unclear whether the idea of suspending habeas corpus is under serious discussion within the West Wing, Miller’s comments pick up on ongoing efforts by the Trump administration to use the current state of illegal border-crossings to claim that there is an invasion — which the administration says allows the government to eschew due process protections afforded to migrants. The administration is making a similar argument in defending Trump’s invocation of the Aliens Enemies Act, which would allow the government to quickly deport migrants without adherence to such due process procedures. Multiple judges, including a Trump appointee, have rejected the invocation, saying in rulings that the administration hadn’t shown the United States is under invasion by a hostile foreign power, as laid out under the 18th century statute. Suspending the writ of habeas corpus would take Trump’s efforts even farther — allowing the government to detain migrants without giving them the opportunity to challenge that detention, essentially allowing the administration to detain people without providing justification.