The Constitution guarantees due process to everyone who might face punitive action by the government of the United States. The language of the Fifth Amendment is stark and unequivocal: 

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury… nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”

There is no exception for cases where a President wishes to expeditiously impose punishments. There is no exception for cases involving immigration paperwork or any other bureaucratic complication. There is no exception for non-citizens. There is no exception for people accused of violent crimes. In fact, the opening line of the Fifth Amendment makes clear: people accused of violent crimes must have due process.

The reason for this is simple: In the absence of a universal guarantee of due process, no one’s freedom is safe from the abuses of would-be tyrants. Due process prevents the levers of power from being used coercively by corrupt interests to exact loyalty not to the law, but to themselves.

The Framers of the Constitution had direct experience of unaccountable tyranny, including that most salient concern—that an imperial power could accuse colonists deprived of basic rights of “capital, or otherwise infamous” crimes, and summarily sentence them to prison, exile, or execution.

We the People of the United States are well aware that Donald Trump faced indictment in four separate cases for extremely serious, “infamous” crimes—including alleged efforts to overturn an election and alleged theft of nuclear and other national security secrets (alleged crimes which are described in federal law as acts of espionage).

In each of those cases, he was afforded due process, and allowed to remain free while pleading the case for a verdict of not-guilty. In one of those cases, he was found guilty of 34 felonies, but was never sentenced, due to deference from the judge to the unique circumstances of his reelection as President. 

Of all people on Earth, President Trump should understand the importance and value of the due process protection. Since he has benefitted so significantly from it, he should be its greatest defender. That he is not, that he has repeatedly sought to circumvent due process, personally making unfounded accusations against people not even charged with crimes, while ignoring or trying to work around court orders, suggests an illicit intent—to undermine the rule of law and gather power to himself that is not created, recognized, or allowed by law.

The democratic republic known as the United States of America exists, and has enabled great breakthroughs in the exercise of political and personal freedom, because the due process protection is absolute and universal.

Procedural maneuvers—moving an accused person from one location to another to avoid judicial review, or transferring them to another agency than the one named in a court order—cannot override the Constitution’s absolute and universal guarantee of due process.

Any official considering whether an order ignoring the Constitution’s universal guarantee of due process can be lawful should consider these three relevant points: 

1. The Fifth Amendment provides no exception, and no citizenship condition.
2. The Ninth Amendment specifies that rights need not be enumerated to enjoy full protection of the Constitution.
3. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection of the law to all people, without a citizenship condition.

In fact, the phrasing of the Fourteenth Amendment is particularly careful and constructive. It notes that if a person is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States or any of the States, that person enjoys equal protection and cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process. The government’s claim of jurisdiction—of its right to enforce the law—is met, in all cases, at all levels, with both equal protection and the guarantee of due process. 

The “innocent until proven guilty” standard, along with all of the other elements of functional due process—the need for a judicial warrant based on probable cause, the need for charges based on alleged violations of specific laws, the presentation of evidence to a grand jury, and then the right to argue one’s innocence at trial, with legal counsel—is not just the right of Donald Trump; it applied in his various criminal cases, because it applies to everyone, in all cases.

No agent of government, at any level, has any lawful authority to act against the universal due process right of all people inside of or subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.