Senator James Lankford (R-OK) said Tuesday on CNN’s “The Arena” that someone being deported for illegally being in the United States should get due process “before they’re removed from the country.”
Host Kasie Hunt said, “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 said, “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.”
He added, “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.”
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