PolitiFact’s relationship with Facebook might be over, but just in case Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg feels the need to change his mind one day, a Thursday article from Maria Ramirez Uribe proved why it should stay that way. Uribe rated President Trump “false” for saying “there’s a different standard” for due process for illegal immigrants despite admitting he was, in fact, correct.
The full quote from Trump came from an interview with ABC’s Terry Moran, “If people come into our country illegally, there’s a different standard.”
There are other quotes from Trump that Uribe cites, such as, “Judges are interfering supposedly based on due process, but how can you give due process to people who came into our country illegally? They want to give them due process. I don’t know.”
Additionally, Uribe cites Trump lamenting, “”The courts have, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they said, maybe you have to have trials. Trials. We’re gonna have 5 million trials? Doesn’t work. … Past presidents took out hundreds of thousands of people when needed. … They didn’t go through any of this.”
The article’s headline only referenced the first, so that is the most important one. In the “If your time is short” summary at the top of the article, Uribe writes, “The due process immigrants are afforded varies depending on how long a person has been in the U.S. and their legal status.”
In other words, there is a different standard, just as Trump said. When most people think of due process rights of being read your Miranda rights, the right to an attorney, and the right to a jury trial.
Obviously, an illegal immigrant facing deportation is facing a different type of trial, so the process will be different, as Uribe later admitted, “In immigration, due process generally refers to ‘appropriate notice (of government action), the opportunity to have a hearing or some sort of screening interview to figure out, are you actually a person who falls within the law that says that you can be deported,’ Katherine Yon Ebright, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security program, said.”
Under the subheading, “How do due process rights differ for noncitizens compared with U.S. citizens?” Uribe continued to acknowledge differences, “Noncitizens are not entitled to government-appointed lawyers during immigration proceedings, for example. And some immigrants who recently entered the U.S. illegally don’t have to appear before a judge before being deported; these cases are subject to what’s called the expedited removal process.”
Uribe goes on to cite, “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the administration April 7, saying it must give immigrants notice that they will be deported under the Alien Enemies Act, and give them ‘reasonable time’ to challenge the deportation in court,” and condemns Stephen Miller for declaring, “Due process guarantees the rights of a criminal defendant facing prosecution, not an illegal alien facing deportation.”
Fine, but now PolitiFact is checking two different claims: illegal immigrants have different due process standards, and illegal immigrants have no due process standards for deportation while claiming to check just one. The one in the headline about illegal immigrants having different due process standards with regard to deportation is true. As it stands, the undeserved false label will continue to help the narrative that Trump is fact-check more because he deserves it.