Pete Buttigieg Nails Trump With 1 Point About Due Process: 'I'm Not A Lawyer...'

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is posing an impeccable statement astir owed process to President Donald Trump, whose medication mistakenly sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a notorious situation successful El Salvador and has defied a U.S. Supreme Court order to facilitate his return.

Buttigieg took the signifier Tuesday astatine a municipality hallway successful Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and condemned the medication for its seeming indifference to owed process, a law close that affords individuals a just ineligible proceeding earlier being deprived of life, liberty oregon property.

“I’m not a lawyer,” said Buttigieg. “You shouldn’t person to beryllium to cognize that owed process is afforded to everybody, due to the fact that it is done that owed process that our nine tin marque decisions … astir what happens to you if you are, successful fact, held to beryllium successful usurpation of the law.”

“As, ironically, happened to the president himself erstwhile helium went done probable cause, owed process, assemblage — each that,” helium continued, referring to Trump’s condemnation past twelvemonth successful New York connected 34 transgression charges of falsifying concern records successful a historical hush wealth trial.

Abrego Garcia had been surviving successful the U.S. for astir 14 years but was deported successful March contempt a federal protective bid from 2019 declaring helium couldn’t beryllium sent backmost to his commencement state owed to fears of pack retribution. The Department of Justice has acknowledged his removal was due to an “administrative error.”

Trump, who precocious said he isn’t definite whether helium has a duty to uphold the Constitution, has justified the removal by claiming Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 pack member. The allegation, which the president appears to beryllium basing connected his tattoos, has ne'er been proved successful court.

“They’re saying, ‘Well, this guy, he’s a criminal,’” Buttigieg said Tuesday. “The full constituent is that nary 1 idiosyncratic — slightest of all, nary 1 person — gets to determine that you’re a criminal. Who decides? We person a process. We person laws. That’s what owed process is.”

“You’re not a transgression due to the fact that the caput of the authorities of the state you unrecorded successful says you’re a criminal,” helium added. “Then, if that is the mode it works, we are not a federation of laws.”

Trump launched wide deportations soon aft assuming bureau earlier this twelvemonth and has since floated potentially sending immoderate U.S. citizens to El Salvador arsenic well. Senior advisor Stephen Miller precocious confirmed the medication is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus.

Enshrined successful the Constitution, habeas corpus attempts to shield radical from unlawful detention by guaranteeing them the close to look successful beforehand of a judge. On Tuesday, Buttigieg argued that lawmakers who person stayed soundless connected the substance “have much to fearfulness from Trump” than they think.

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