Overview
- Reporting based on internal memos made public this week says White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller urged President Trump to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants to bypass court challenges and accelerate deportations.
- Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, wrote a confidential April 29, 2025 memo that warned a unilateral suspension would be legally weak and likely trigger immediate litigation and political blowback, and his objections helped stop the plan.
- Vice President J.D. Vance and Miller also urged invoking the Insurrection Act after a deadly January enforcement incident in Minnesota, but senior staff questioned the law's fit for crowd control and the administration did not use it.
- Habeas corpus is the constitutional right that lets people challenge detention in court and the Suspension Clause ties suspension to rebellion or invasion and typically to congressional action, so lawyers argued a presidential-only move would be vulnerable.
- The disclosures come from New York Times reporting drawn from a forthcoming book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan and have prompted debate about how far the administration might press executive power and what legal and political consequences could follow.