Washington, D.C. — Despite repeated claims by the Trump administration that it is restoring the “rule of law,” a new Center for American Progress report details how the administration’s actions on immigration treat legal constraints as optional and independent judicial oversight as illegitimate. Drawing from exhaustive legal filings from 2025 and early 2026, the report highlights several critical abuses of power that undermine American democracy:
- Deportations without due process or any legal authority: From the deportations of Venezuelan nationals under the Alien Enemies Act, to those of people who are not subject to a final order of removal, to those of people in violation of court order, the administration has removed hundreds of people in clear violation of the law.
- Systemic contempt of the federal judiciary: The administration has violated hundreds of federal court orders. This includes missing court deadlines, refusing to release detainees, and ignoring injunctions prohibiting the interstate transfer of detainees.
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“Chain refoulement” and foreign proxy imprisonment: The administration has used millions of taxpayer dollars to orchestrate agreements with foreign governments that accept and then imprison third-country nationals. In many cases, these foreign governments have also promptly returned third-country nationals to places where they face documented torture and persecution, essentially allowing the administration to execute an illegal end run around human rights treaties.
- Unlawful mandatory detention overreach: In 2025, the Trump administration adopted a radical interpretation of law to deny bond hearings to all noncitizens who entered the country without inspection, most of whom have lived here for more than a decade. Approximately 440 district court judges—as well as penal of judges on three U.S. Courts of Appeal—have so far ruled against the administration’s mandatory detention policy in nearly 11,000 cases. The government has failed to comply with many of these rulings.
- Warrantless raids, lethal force, and executive cover-ups: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directives have authorized warrantless forced entries into private homes, bypassing Fourth Amendment protections, and increased warrantless arrests in public. Aggressive enforcement actions by ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol generated a culture of lawlessness that fueled the January 2026 killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti and the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in Minnesota. Political interference from the U.S. Department of Justice targeting the families of Good and Pretti sparked mass resignations among veteran, career prosecutors and lies about Sosa’s shooting resulted in the filing of state charges against the immigration agent involved.
- Targeting legal parolees and refugees: In early 2025, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security illegally weaponized expedited removal powers against immigration parolees. In January 2026, ICE also began to conduct mass arrests of legally admitted, working refugees who were simply waiting for the government to adjudicate their backlogged permanent residency applications.
“The rule of law depends on the idea that government power is constrained by legal rules, that those rules are applied consistently, and that no one is above the law,” said Tom Jawetz, senior fellow for Immigration Policy at CAP and author of the report. “The choice is not between enforcement and lawlessness, but between enforcement that respects the rule of law and enforcement that corrodes it. We need to recommit to due process at every stage of enforcement; respect the legitimacy and role of courts; and build an immigration system that works and works as designed.”
Read the report: “The Trump Administration’s Assault on Immigrants Degrades the Rule of Law” by Tom Jawetz
For more information or to speak with an expert, please contact Rafael Medina at [email protected].