A senior White House official has said US President Donald Trump, as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown, is looking at suspending habeas corpus, which is the right of a person to challenge their detention in court.
"The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion," White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters.
"So it's an option we're actively looking at," Mr Miller said. "A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not."
Mr Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants and has repeatedly referred to their presence in the United States as an "invasion."
Since taking office in January, Mr Trump has been seeking to step up deportations, but his efforts have met with pushback from multiple federal courts which have insisted that migrants targeted for removal receive due process.
Among other measures, the Republican president invoked an obscure wartime law in March to summarily deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador.
Several federal courts have blocked further deportations using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and the Supreme Court also weighed in, saying migrants subject to deportation under the AEA must be given an opportunity to legally challenge their removal in court.
The AEA was last used to round up Japanese-Americans during World War II and was previously invoked during the War of 1812 and World War I.
Suspending habeas corpus could potentially allow the administration to dispense with individual removal proceedings and speed up deportations, but the move would almost certainly be met with stiff legal challenges and end up in the Supreme Court.
It has been suspended only rarely in US history, most notably by President Abraham Lincoln during the 1861-1865 Civil War and in Hawaii after the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
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New Jersey mayor charged with trespassing at detention centre
Meanwhile the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, a Democrat who is running for governor, was arrested yesterday on a charge of trespassing at a privately run federal immigration detention centre while three politicians were on site for an unannounced inspection, officials said.
Mayor Ras Baraka was taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in a scuffle at the gate to the ICE facility in Newark during the visit by three members of New Jersey's congressional delegation, according to a spokesperson for one of them, US Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman.
The spokesperson, Ned Cooper, said Ms Watson Coleman and her two fellow Democratic colleagues, Representatives LaMonica McIver and Robert Menendez Jr, were also "shoved around a bit" in the fracas, but no one was believed to have been hurt.
Alina Habba, a former lawyer to President Donald Trump serving as acting US attorney, said on social media outlet X that Mr Baraka "committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings" to leave the ICE facility, known as Delaney Hall.
Appearing later on Fox News, Ms Habba also accused Mr Baraka of "grandstanding."
Mr Baraka, who was held at a nearby ICE field office after his arrest, was later charged with a single count of trespassing, according to a criminal complaint filed by Ms Habba's office.
The mayor was released at about 8pm, after some seven hours in custody.
In remarks to a crowd of supporters after he was freed, Mr Baraka said he "didn't do anything wrong" and hadg one to Delaney Hall "to support my Congress people." He urged the crowd to disperse peacefully.
A spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE, said members of Congress were part of a group of demonstrators who tried to force their way into the facility when a bus of detainees arrived.
"These members of Congress storming into a detention facility goes beyond bizarre political stunt and puts the safety of our law enforcement agents and the detainees at risk," the spokesperson said in a statement.
Mr Cooper said Ms Watson Coleman, Ms McIver and Mr Menendez paid an unannounced visit to the detention centre "exercising their oversight roles as members of Congress," and that ICE was obligated to grant them admission.
Allegations that politicians stormed the facility are "factually not true," Mr Cooper said, adding that Mr Baraka remained outside the fence around the grounds to the facility, where he "has been continually showing up" in recent days.
Mr Cooper said the politicians were not part of or coordinated with a separate protest that was taking place at the facility, and had not coordinated their visit with the mayor.
