Trump administration’s reported plan to suspend habeas corpus ‘should be a wake-up call,’ says US senator

By Yasin Gungor

ISTANBUL (AA) – A US senator from the eastern state of Maryland warned on Monday that the US President Donald Trump administration's reported consideration of suspending habeas corpus "should be a wake-up call" for all Americans.

"It just shows what lengths this administration will go to," Chris Van Hollen said at the Center for American Progress, criticizing the potential move as a fundamental challenge to constitutional rights.

The senator specifically highlighted White House advisor Stephen Miller's remarks on the reported proposal, describing it as “essentially declaring martial law in the United States of America."

"This should be a wake-up call to everybody, conservatives, liberals, everybody in the middle," Van Hollen emphasized, noting Miller's significant influence on Trump.

Miller said that the administration is "actively looking at" suspending habeas corpus, which would remove an individual's right to challenge their detention in court.

Van Hollen stressed the importance of directly confronting such actions. "If you actually were just to ignore what they're doing and give them free rein, that's what they want," he said.

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- ‘Bullies’ not content with just the ‘vulnerable’

The senator argued that if Trump is allowed to "trample over” Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s constitutional rights as a “vulnerable” person, everyone’s rights are under threat. "What bullies do is they start by picking on people they think are most vulnerable, but they don't stop there," he said.

Garcia is a Salvadoran man and Maryland resident who was wrongfully deported from the US to El Salvador on March 15, in what the Trump administration later called an "administrative error."

Van Hollen criticized the administration's resistance to legal challenges, pointing to the Supreme Court unanimously ordering the return of Garcia, yet the administration has continued to resist. “As we sit here, Donald Trump is thumbing his nose at the courts,” he said.

He said both the Trump administration and the Salvadoran government spread disinformation to change the narrative to the fight against gang violence. “We can fight gang violence without suspending the Constitution of the United States,” he said. Van Hollen accused El Salvador of complicity because they are holding Garcia “solely because they're being paid by the US government.”

Van Hollen also criticized Republicans in Congress for failing to stand up to these constitutional violations. "Republicans in Congress apparently have no bottom when it comes to what they're going to stand up and defend," he said.