Sarah Huckabee Sanders Not So Sure About That Whole 'Due Process' Thing for Immigrants

After President Trump doubled down Monday morning on the notion that allowing undocumented immigrants their full legal and constitutional rights is just too big of a time suck, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders took the baton this afternoon, kicking up some impressive gibberish to further muddy the waters.

“Just because you don’t see a judge doesn’t mean you aren’t receiving due process,” Sanders said at Monday’s White House press briefing, after being asked about Trump’s tweets suggesting, in no uncertain terms, that the U.S. should be deporting people without legal proceedings to speed the process up.

When reminded that due process means that any person, even those who have entered the country without documentation, have a constitutional right to fair treatment in our legal system—Sanders came up awfully short. She repeatedly cited “expedited” and “voluntary” deportations as one of the “other” ways undocumented people can be removed from the country.

“Thousands of illegal aliens are removed every month without seeing an immigration judge as a result of procedures in current law,” she also said, like that’s a good thing.

And, of course, Sanders argued that the best offense is really a big old wall: “Also, the president would like to see us stop people from illegally entering the country at all.”

Pressed again about whether Trump’s tweets mean anything is actually changing in terms of how immigration cases are handled on the ground, the press secretary would only vaguely say the administration is already doing “things that we have the ability to do administratively,” without congressional approval.

Sanders also opened the briefing with a prepared statement on the story of the day: Her family getting kicked out of a Virginia restaurant over the weekend.

“We are allowed to disagree, but we should be able to do so freely and without fear of harm,” she said with the utmost seriousness. Unfortunately, this administration clearly doesn’t believe the same protection should be afforded to undocumented people.