Last updated: July 16, 2026. This page lists the most egregious violations. See also additional due process violations.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
| Date | Administration Action | Why does this violate the Constitution? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 2025 | ICE deported hundreds of foreign nationals to El Salvador’s CECOT prison under the Alien Enemies Act, without a hearing, lawyer, or due process of any kind. | The Supreme Court ruled that migrants must be given notice and the chance to contest their deportation, and later held that 24-hour notice “does not pass constitutional muster.” A federal appeals court subsequently ruled the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act itself unlawful, finding no “invasion or predatory incursion.” | The roughly 250 men held incommunicado in CECOT for four months were released to Venezuela in a July 2025 prisoner swap; many reported torture, beatings, and sexual assault. In December 2025, a federal judge ruled the deportees had been denied due process and ordered the government to facilitate their return or provide hearings. |
| March 2025 | Deported Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador’s CECOT prison despite a 2019 immigration ruling barring his removal there, then resisted court orders to return him for months. After his court-ordered return, the administration criminally charged him and repeatedly attempted to deport him to African countries he has no connection to. | The Supreme Court ordered the government to “facilitate” his return in April 2025. A federal judge found the government held him without any valid removal order and that “court orders compelling testimony on this matter were ignored without justification.” In May 2026, another federal judge dismissed the criminal case as a vindictive prosecution, finding that “absent Ábrego’s successful lawsuit… the government would not have brought this prosecution.” | A federal court held that the executive branch weaponized criminal prosecution to punish a man for winning in court — while officials tried to remove him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and Liberia, refusing his offer of Costa Rica. |
| March 2025 | A Turkish doctoral student legally residing in the U.S. was arrested for writing an op-ed that criticized her university’s response to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Her arresting officers refused to let her speak to her lawyer. They also drove her from where she was arrested in Massachusetts to Vermont, where she was flown to a detention facility in Louisiana, presumably to find a more favorable court ruling. | This is a violation of free speech and the right to due process. A Vermont judge ordered that she be returned to New England. | In May 2025, a federal judge ordered her immediate release on bail, finding her arrest appeared to be retaliation for her op-ed. |
| April 2025 | ICE deported three U.S. citizen children, ages 2, 4, and 7, along with their mothers. | The mothers of the children, foreign nationals, were given neither appropriate opportunity to speak with lawyers nor the options available to care for the children. | One of the children is suffering from metastatic cancer and, despite knowing of the child’s condition, ICE deported them without medication or the ability to consult with their doctor. The deportation of the 2-year-old occurred before their hearing scheduled by a federal judge. In response, the judge said that “It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen.” The families filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit in July 2025, alleging they were secretly held in hotel rooms and denied calls to family and counsel. |
| May 2025 | Deported men to third countries they had no connection to — including putting eight men on a flight toward South Sudan roughly 16 hours after notifying them — without a meaningful chance to raise fears of torture. Destinations included South Sudan, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, and Cameroon. | A class action alleges that removals to unnoticed third countries without a chance to raise torture claims violate Fifth Amendment due process. In February 2026, a federal judge held the entire third-country removal policy unlawful and vacated it. | The Supreme Court had allowed the removals to continue during litigation in an unexplained June 2025 order; Justice Sotomayor’s dissent called the stay a “gross abuse” of discretion. The February 2026 ruling was stayed pending an expedited appeal. |
| July 2025 | Issued an ICE policy making everyone who entered the country unlawfully — including people who have lived in the U.S. for decades — ineligible for bond hearings, meaning indefinite detention with no individual review, and continued applying the policy after hundreds of courts ruled against it. | A federal appeals court held the Constitution forbids detention for “indefinite and extensive periods of time without an individualized determination.” By late 2025, at least 225 federal judges in more than 700 cases had held the policy likely unlawful. | One federal judge found the government directed immigration judges to keep denying bond hearings despite her ruling that the policy is unlawful, writing that the government “far crossed the boundaries of constitutional conduct” and invoking Madison’s “very definition of tyranny.” |
| August 2025 | Woke hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children in government shelters and foster care in the middle of the night over Labor Day weekend and loaded them onto planes for removal — most without final removal orders, some with pending claims. | Removing children without removal orders circumvents federal protections for unaccompanied minors and due process. A judge awakened at 2:30 a.m. issued an emergency order forcing at least one airborne plane to return; children were on planes on the tarmac even as the emergency hearing was underway. | A second federal judge — a Trump appointee — issued a preliminary injunction in September 2025, sharply criticizing the administration’s unproven claim that the children’s parents had requested their return. |
| September 2025 | Flew 14 men to Ghana on a military plane — including five who had won court protection barring their removal to their home countries — four of them restrained in straitjackets for roughly 16 hours. Ghana then sent several onward to the very countries U.S. courts had barred. | A federal judge described “a pattern and widespread effort to evade the government’s legal obligations by doing indirectly what it cannot do directly” and called the government’s attitude toward the men’s safety “cavalier” — using a third country to nullify U.S. court protection orders. | One of the men reported being beaten by security forces after being sent on to Nigeria. |
| October 2025 | Held detainees at the Broadview, Illinois ICE processing facility in overcrowded, filthy cells without room to sleep, adequate food, water, medical care, or hygiene; coerced them into signing documents they didn’t understand; and denied them access to their attorneys. | The government must provide for the health and safety of people in its custody and cannot cut them off from counsel. A federal judge ordered ICE to provide clean sleeping areas, three meals a day, water, medications, and private attorney calls, writing that detainees “have suffered, and are likely to suffer, irreparable harm.” | The court later compelled release of arrest data and video, and a magistrate judge inspected the site. Similar counsel-access orders were issued for facilities in Florida, Minnesota, and elsewhere. |
| January 2026 | ICE deported a 5-year-old U.S. citizen, Génesis Gutiérrez of Austin, Texas, to Honduras with her mother, after holding them for days in a hotel with no attorney, no judge, and no chance to arrange for the citizen child to stay. | A U.S. citizen cannot lawfully be deported at all. The removal repeated the exact incommunicado pattern that courts and lawsuits had already condemned in the April 2025 deportations of citizen children. | |
| 2025–2026 | Systematically obstructed habeas corpus proceedings: across more than 800 tracked cases, the government failed to respond to court orders (508 cases), missed release deadlines (142), executed transfers courts had prohibited (90), and made representations courts found false or misleading (121). | These are direct violations of federal court orders in habeas cases — the core constitutional safeguard against unlawful detention. Judges have opened over 250 show-cause or contempt proceedings, with sanctions imposed in more than a dozen cases. | Multiple judges ordered detainees’ immediate release on due process grounds after the government simply refused to justify their detention. A New York Times analysis counted 35+ show-cause contempt orders against the administration since August 2025. |