Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was brutally called out Tuesday after she claimed the United States was not deporting its own citizens.
During a hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois asked Noem if she believed that the U.S. government had the authority to deport American citizens.
“No, and we are not deporting U.S. citizens,” Noem said.
“OK great, I’m so happy to hear that you do not believe that the law gives you that authority, because the federal government has no authority under U.S. laws to deport any American citizen,” Underwood said. “And as I know everyone viewing this hearing today knows that several American citizens have been deported to date.”
“No, they haven’t. That is not true,” Noem replied.
“Secretary Noem, that was not a question,” Underwood said.
Last month, the Trump administration deported three American children to Honduras, alongside their immigrant mothers. Attorneys for the mothers have said that they wanted their children to remain in the U.S., but authorities have said the opposite. Border czar Tom Homan insisted that the children hadn’t technically been deported, and that the mothers had made a “parental decision” to remain with their children.
“If we didn’t do it the story today would be, ‘Trump administration separating families again,’” Homan said. “No, we’re keeping families together.”
While the official number of deportees who are actually American citizens is unknown, The Washington Post documented at least 12 instances in which U.S. citizens had been swept up in Trump’s immigration crackdown. A DHS spokesperson told the outlet, “We don’t have data to provide you on the deportation of U.S. citizens because we don’t deport U.S. citizens.”
Crucially, as the Trump administration continues to conduct deportations while denying due process to detainees, it’s likely the number of U.S. citizens wrongly removed will only continue to rise.
Underwood also asked Noem if she believed that the Constitution guaranteed due process to everyone in America. Noem repeatedly refused to give a “yes” or “no” answer.
“Ma’m, I am trying to ascertain your understanding of the law as it applies to your department, and you as its leader should be able to give us a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, because judge after judge has ruled that the law is not being followed,” Underwood said.
The Trump administration has continued to fight judges, flouting a Supreme Court ruling requiring the government to allow detainees “to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” As a result of Donald Trump’s mounting threats against the judiciary, at least 11 federal judges and their families have been threatened and harassed since they ruled against Trump on issues of deportations, federal funding, and his war on “wokeness.”
Trump has instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into the legality of deporting prisoners who are U.S. citizens to foreign prisons, as he did with 238 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador in March. He even said he’d help fund the construction of new prisons overseas. Even though Trump’s scheme to outsource the incarceration of American prisoners has absolutely no basis in U.S. law, Bondi refused to give answers about the (il)legality of the idea.
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