When NBC’s Kristen Welker asked President Trump last Sunday whether illegal aliens have due process rights, he hedged.

“I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials,” Trump replied on “Meet the Press.”

That’s not even close to good enough. Trump should have responded clearly and forcefully: While everyone enjoys due process before being criminally punished, deportation is not punishment. It’s an administrative action that flows from national sovereignty.

Illegal aliens do not possess the same due process rights as citizens. They can make their case to immigration officials — but those officials retain full discretion to deny their request and carry out removal. We’re not jailing these people; they are free to return home on their own. If they refuse, we remove them — just like any homeowner would remove a trespasser.

The analogy is simple. If a burglar breaks into your home, you can’t torture or imprison him without a trial. But you absolutely can — and should — force him to leave.

That’s why deportation proceedings don’t come with government-funded lawyers. The law is clear: “In any removal proceedings before an immigration judge ... the person concerned shall have the privilege of being represented (at no expense to the Government) by such counsel.”

The United States must enforce its borders — not apologize for them.

Trump’s hesitation creates the impression that illegal aliens do enjoy full due process under immigration law — but implementing it would just be too hard. That argument doesn’t persuade. The American people don’t want laws ignored simply because enforcing them is difficult.

Welker pushed further: “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?”

Trump replied: “I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

But we should never confuse what the Supreme Court says with what the Constitution requires. The court has long recognized that immigration law operates under different standards. The power to exclude or remove aliens lies entirely with Congress and the executive branch, not the judiciary.

What the founders, Supreme Court, and Constitution say

The constitutional, statutory, and philosophical basis for removing aliens without full judicial due process is overwhelming. The historical record speaks for itself:

1. Gouverneur Morris, Constitutional Convention debates (1787):

“Every society from a great nation down to a club had the right of declaring the conditions on which new members should be admitted, there can be room for no complaint.”

2. William Rawle, “A View of the Constitution of the United States of America” (2nd edition):

“In a republic the sovereignty resides essentially, and entirely in the people. Those only who compose the people, and partake of this sovereignty are citizens, they alone can elect, and are capable of being elected to public offices, and of course they alone can exercise authority within the community: they possess an unqualified right to the enjoyment of property and personal immunity, they are bound to adhere to it in peace, to defend it in war, and to postpone the interests of all other countries to the affection which they ought to bear for their own.”

3. Chief Justice John Marshall, The Exchange v. McFaddon (1812):

“The jurisdiction of the nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute. It is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by itself. Any restriction upon it deriving validity from an external source would imply a diminution of its sovereignty to the extent of the restriction and an investment of that sovereignty to the same extent in that power which could impose such restriction. All exceptions, therefore, to the full and complete power of a nation within its own territories must be traced up to the consent of the nation itself. They can flow from no other legitimate source.”

4. Nishimura Ekiu v. United States (1892):

“It is an accepted maxim of international law that every sovereign nation has the power, as inherent in sovereignty, and essential to self-preservation, to forbid the entrance of foreigners within its dominions or to admit them only in such cases and upon such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe.”

5. Chae Chan Ping v. United States (1889):

“That the government of the United States, through the action of the legislative department, can exclude aliens from its territory is a proposition which we do not think open to controversy. Jurisdiction over its own territory to that extent is an incident of every independent nation. It is a part of its independence. If it could not exclude aliens it would be to that extent subject to the control of another power.”

6. Kansas v. Colorado (1907):

“Self-preservation is the highest right and duty of a Nation.”

The right to deport is an extension of the right to exclude

7. Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893):

“The right of a nation to expel or deport foreigners who have not been naturalized, or taken any steps towards becoming citizens of the country, rests upon the same grounds, and is as absolute and unqualified as the right to prohibit and prevent their entrance into the country.”

8. Justice James Iredell, Charge to Grand Jury (1799):

“Any alien coming to this country must or ought to know, that this being an independent nation, it has all the rights concerning the removal of aliens which belong by the law of nations to any other; that while he remains in the country in the character of an alien, he can claim no other privilege than such as an alien is entitled to, and consequently, whatever [risk] he may incur in that capacity is incurred voluntarily, with the hope that in due time by his unexceptionable conduct, he may become a citizen of the United States.”

9. Emer de Vattel, “The Law of Nations” (1797):

“Every nation has the right to refuse to admit a foreigner into the country, when he cannot enter without putting the nation in evident danger, or doing it a manifest injury. ... Thus, also, it has a right to send them elsewhere, if it has just cause to fear that they will corrupt the manners of the citizens; that they will create religious disturbances, or occasion any other disorder, contrary to the public safety. In a word, it has a right, and is even obliged, in this respect, to follow the rules which prudence dictates.”

Courts have no jurisdiction to interfere

10. Lem Moon Sing v. United States (1895):

“The power of Congress to exclude aliens altogether from the United States, or to prescribe the terms and conditions upon which they may come to this country, and to have its declared policy in that regard enforced exclusively through executive officers, without judicial intervention, is settled by our previous adjudications.”

11. Knauff v. Shaughnessy(1950):

“The admission of aliens to this country is not a right, but a privilege, which is granted only upon such terms as the United States prescribes. … The decision to admit or to exclude an alien may be lawfully placed with the [p]resident, who may in turn delegate the carrying out of this function to a responsible executive officer. ... The action of the executive officer under such authority is final and conclusive. Whatever the rule may be concerning deportation of persons who have gained entry into the United States, it is not within the province of any court, unless expressly authorized by law, to review the determination of the political branch of the Government to exclude a given alien.”

12. Fiallo v. Bell (1977):

“This Court has repeatedly emphasized that ‘over no conceivable subject is the legislative power of Congress more complete than it is over’ the admission of aliens.”

13. Harisiades v. Shaughnessy (1952):

“We think that, in the present state of the world, it would be rash and irresponsible to reinterpret our fundamental law to deny or qualify the Government’s power of deportation. ... Reform in this field must be entrusted to the branches of the Government in control of our international relations and treatymaking powers. We hold that the Act is not invalid under the Due Process Clause.”

Due process does not guarantee entry or residency

14. Lem Moon Sing v. U.S. (1895):

“As to such persons [non-citizens wishing to remain in the U.S.], the decisions of executive or administrative officers, acting within powers expressly conferred by [C]ongress, are due process of law.”

15. Galvan v. Press(1954):

“Policies pertaining to the entry of aliens and their right to remain here are peculiarly concerned with the political conduct of government ... that the formulation of these policies is entrusted exclusively to Congress has become about as firmly imbedded ... as any aspect of our government.”

16. Justice Robert Jackson (dissenting), Shaughnessy v. Mezei (1953):

“Due process does not invest any alien with a right to enter the United States, nor confer on those admitted the right to remain against the national will.”

Deportation is not punishment

17. Turner v. Williams (1904):

“No limits can be put by the courts upon the power of Congress to protect, by summary methods, the country from the advent of aliens. ... But to declare unlawful residence within the country to be an infamous crime, punishable by deprivation of liberty and property, would be to pass out of the sphere of constitutional legislation unless provision were made that the fact of guilt should first be established by a judicial trial.”

18. Fong Yue Ting v. U.S.(1893):

“The order of deportation is not a punishment for crime. It is not a banishment, in the sense in which that word is often applied. ... It is but a method of enforcing the return to his own country of an alien who has not complied with the conditions.”

Trump never should have equivocated on immigration law — or deferred to his lawyers. The Constitution, the courts, America’s founders, and common sense all say the same thing: Noncitizens do not enjoy an absolute right to remain in the United States. Deportation does not violate due process because deportation is not punishment. It is the lawful exercise of sovereignty.

The United States must enforce its borders — not apologize for them.