NBC News host Kristen Welker suggested illegal immigrants are entitled to “due process” under the Constitution, prompting Republican Florida Rep. Byron Donalds to argue that the sheer number of illegal border crossings under former President Joe Biden has made that untenable.
There were about 8.5 million migrant encounters along the U.S southern border from fiscal years 2021 to 2024 under Biden, according to data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP). While Welker cited the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of “due process” for any individual in the United States, Donalds responded that the Constitution’s framers did not foresee a president enabling millions of illegal entries.
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“First and foremost, when the framers wrote our Constitution, they never envisioned that there would be an executive that would allow millions of people to come into the country illegally. They never fathomed that,” Donalds said. “Number two, more importantly, you have a situation right now — is it okay for any administration to not follow the law, abuse border security laws, let millions of people in, and then hide behind a court system to say, ‘Well, now they’re here, so now we have to go through a lengthy process’?”
“Let’s examine this right now. Right now what we know is that when people came into the country illegally, almost 90% of them would not even go to the hearings,” he continued. “So if you’re supposed to show up for a hearing and you do not go, what are we supposed to do as a country at that point?”
President Donald Trump’s administration deported alleged MS-13 member Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to prison in El Salvador, acknowledging it made an “administrative error.” Democrats responded with outrage about the process of his deportation, even making journeys to El Salvador to demand his return to the U.S.
The Supreme Court ruled on April 10 that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s “release from custody in El Salvador” and “ensure that his case is handled as it would have been” prior to his deportation.
Biden also oversaw the highest level of net migration in American history during his single term as president. The House voted to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in February 2024 over his management of the border crisis, but Democrats in the Senate quickly killed the impeachment trial.
Welker pursued a similar line of questioning with Trump during his Sunday “Meet the Press” interview with her. Trump acknowledged the Fifth Amendment may say that illegal immigrants are entitled to “due process,” but brought up the difficulties, similarly to Donalds.
“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 … And I was elected to get them the hell out of here and the courts are holding me from doing it.”
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