Every Person Deserves a Day in Court”? Jayapal’s Sleight of Hand Exposed

Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s framing that Republicans are “ignoring due process for immigrants” and that her amendment is about making sure “EVERY person deserves their day in court” is politically potent rhetoric, but it obscures key legal realities, her own legislative record, and what “due process” already means in U.S. immigration law.​

What “due process” actually means here

In U.S. law, “due process” does not mean every foreign national who enters illegally or is apprehended at the border is entitled to a full-blown, years‑long, jury‑style trial in federal court. It means the government must follow procedures that are fundamentally fair under the Constitution, and the Supreme Court has long held that Congress has broad power to set streamlined procedures for would‑be entrants and recent unlawful arrivals, including “expedited removal” with limited review. Portraying Republican enforcement proposals as a wholesale abandonment of due process ignores that even expedited removal still includes notice, an opportunity to respond, and specific protections for asserted asylum claims.​

Jayapal’s record: redefining the system, not just “adding” rights

Jayapal has made immigration a defining issue of her career and is not simply defending existing due process; she is trying to rewrite the enforcement system itself. Her “Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act” would repeal mandatory detention, phase out private detention, create a presumption of release, and sharply raise the government’s burden to detain even recent arrivals and asylum seekers, intentionally shrinking detention as an enforcement tool. Her support for the “New Way Forward Act” went further by ending mandatory immigration detention without bond in most cases and rolling back 1990s laws that made deportation easier for non‑citizens convicted of crimes, all under the banner of “restoring due process.”​

Due process vs. de facto amnesty

Because immigration courts already face massive backlogs, guaranteeing every illegal entrant a full adversarial hearing as a practical prerequisite to removal would function less as “due process” and more as a de facto amnesty for many. When lawmakers demand universal, court‑style proceedings while simultaneously pushing to end detention, restrict expedited procedures, and expand work authorization, they are effectively creating powerful incentives to enter and remain in the country unlawfully, knowing removal is unlikely or years away. Jayapal’s rhetoric rarely acknowledges the trade‑off between maximal procedural expansion and the government’s basic ability to enforce the border and carry out removal orders in a timely way.​

The constitutional sleight of hand

Jayapal routinely speaks as if every non‑citizen anywhere in the process possesses the same constitutional protections as a citizen “inside the community,” and implies that limiting those protections for recent unlawful entrants is an attack on the Constitution itself. In reality, the Court has consistently distinguished between the due process owed to people with deep ties and presence in the U.S. and the more limited rights of those stopped at or just inside the border seeking initial admission, allowing Congress to design highly streamlined procedures at that threshold. By collapsing those distinctions, she blurs the line between immigration policy disagreement and constitutional crisis, casting routine enforcement debates as moral emergencies in which opponents are “ignoring due process” rather than following a different, legally recognized framework.​

Who is she prioritizing?

Jayapal frequently highlights stories of families in detention and asylum seekers, but her legislative agenda would also significantly curb the government’s ability to deport non‑citizens with criminal records whose removal Congress has already mandated. Critics argue that by insisting that even such cases require expanded release, alternatives to detention, and greater procedural hurdles before removal, she is elevating the interests of non‑citizens—often including those who have violated both immigration and criminal laws—over the expectations of citizens and legal immigrants who did follow established rules. Framing this agenda as a simple matter of “EVERY person deserves their day in court” conceals the underlying choice: using expansive, redefined “due process” as the vehicle to systematically weaken immigration enforcement itself.

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