The White House says it is open to the idea of suspending the writ of habeas corpus — or the right to challenge one’s detention — for migrants as the administration looks to speed up its mass deportation operation. The admission came on Monday morning as border tsar Tom Homan took to the White House press podium to highlight the administration’s efforts to deport migrants charged with crimes in the United States. 

Some conservatives have been criticizing President Trump’s inability to deport migrants on a larger scale. Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has set his sights on removing at least one million migrants by the end of 2025, though fewer than 40,000 were deported during the president’s first month in office, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

In order to speed up the process, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says the administration is leaving all options on the table — including suspension of the writ of habeas corpus for migrants accused of being in the country illegally. 

“I have not heard such discussions take place, but I can assure you that the president and the entire administration are certainly open to all legal and constitutional remedies to ensure we can continue with the promise of deporting illegal criminals,” Ms. Leavitt said when asked if the administration was considering a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. 

“It is absurd that the previous administration [would] allow 15 million — that we know about — illegal aliens into this country with very little pushback from our judicial branch,” she added. 

Ms. Leavitt was joined behind the White House press briefing room podium by Mr. Homan on Monday. Both officials wanted to highlight what the administration sees as a successful deportation scheme as the president prepares to mark his one hundredth day since returning to the Oval Office. 

Members of the press corps were greeted by 100 signs propped up along the North Lawn on Monday morning — each one of them with a photo of a deported migrant charged with a crime in the United States. Mr. Homan says their effort so far has been an “unprecedented” success. 

“Border numbers are [at] a historic low. Today, as I’m standing here, we have the most secure border in the history of this nation, and the numbers prove it,” Mr. Homan said.

Though deportation efforts are not yet at the level that some conservatives would like, the number of border crossings has fallen dramatically in the first three months of the new administration. Just more than 7,000 migrants were apprehended along the southwest border in March — a drop from more than 137,000 encounters in March 2024. 

“Catch and release is over,” Mr. Homan declared. 

Several presidents have suspended the writ of habeas corpus in the past during times of national crisis. President Lincoln suspended that right in parts of Maryland at the outset of the Civil War after rumors spread that groups were set to attack a critical stretch of rail lines between Annapolis and Philadelphia. President Grant suspended the writ of habeas corpus during his war with the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. 

Vice President Vance seems to be the greatest champion for potentially restricting due process rights for migrants accused of being in the country illegally. 

In mid-April, Mr. Vance wrote in a lengthy post on X that the administration ought to be more concerned about the potential threat of migrants than about some migrants’ rights to due process. He says that affording trials and other due process protections to migrants would be a “ratification of Biden’s illegal migrant invasion.”

“Here’s a useful test: ask the people weeping over the lack of due process what precisely they propose for dealing with Biden’s millions and millions of illegals. And with reasonable resource and administrative judge constraints, does their solution allow us to deport at least a few million people per year?” Mr. Vance wrote at the time. “If the answer is no, they’ve given their game away. They don’t want border security. They don’t want us to deport the people who’ve come into our country illegally.”