The White House would have the public believe that Donald Trump’s embrace of the Alien Enemies Act is simply a matter of common sense: The president wants to remove dangerous gang members from the United States, and this is the best way to make that happen.

But the closer one looks, the worse the policy appears. The Trump administration officials have said they used the Alien Enemies Act to send Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador, but they’ve struggled with foundational questions: Were all of the people on the plane gang members? How were they identified? Were they undocumented immigrants? Did they commit any crimes? Are they even Venezuelan? What are their names? Have any of those affected received due process?

It was against this backdrop that a reporter asked Trump on Friday, “Do you think you have the authority, the power to round up people, deport them, and then you’re under no obligation to a court to show the evidence against them?” The Republican replied, “Well, that’s what the law says, and that’s what our country needs.”

He didn’t elaborate as to which “law” he was referring to, or why Americans should believe this outrageous process is what the United States “needs.”

Trump, however, was hardly the only member of his team making outlandish comments. Over the weekend, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared on Fox News — again — and insisted that those who were sent to prison in El Salvador were “illegal aliens who are committing the most violent crimes you can imagine on Americans.”

Whether the nation’s chief law enforcement official knows this or not, a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official conceded in a court filing last week that “many” of those deported did not have criminal records in American courts. According to a lawyer for one of the men affected, the administration sent a gay makeup artist with no criminal record or gang affiliations to the prison in El Salvador, too.

Trump on Friday said “they” checked the deportees “very carefully,” adding, “I was told they went through a very strong vetting process.” There’s reason to believe otherwise: Even White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz conceded over the weekend that the administration might’ve made “one-off” mistakes.

And then, of course, there’s White House border czar Tom Homan. The conservative Washington Times reported:

White House border czar Tom Homan on Sunday promoted the Trump administration’s deportation of alleged migrant gang members, saying the president is operating under federal law and will not defy court orders. Mr. Homan also pushed back against critics who raised concerns about due process rights after President Trump invoked a rarely used wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to fly 240 alleged members of Tren de Aragua and 21 alleged MS-13 members to a high-security prison in El Salvador.

“Due process? What was Laken Riley’s due process?” Homan said on ABC’s “This Week,” referring to a nursing student who was murdered by a Venezuelan illegal immigrant. “What were all these young women that were killed and raped by members of [Tren de Aragua]? What was their due process? How about the young lady that was burned alive on the subway? Where was her due process?”

In other words, to hear the White House border czar put it, criminals don’t provide their victims with due process, so the federal government need not prioritize due process — effectively putting the United States government on the same moral plane as violent felons.

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank added in his latest column, “Without due process, you have what we see today: a leader using a wartime statute in peacetime to declare certain people to be dangerous gang members without providing any evidence, then imprisoning them without charges and finally denying the authority of the courts and defying a court order requiring the leader to obey the laws as written. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the road to despotism.”

For his part, Homan added, “The bottom line is that plane was full of people designated as terrorists. Every Venezuelan on that flight was a TdA member based on numerous criminal investigations, on intelligence reports and a lot of work by ICE officers.”

The border czar has presented no evidence in support of these claims; U.S. intelligence agencies have reportedly come to the opposition conclusion; and ICE made the exact opposite concession in a court filing six days before Homan peddled his claim to a national television audience.

Much of the administration’s position rests on the idea that Americans are simply supposed to trust Trump and his team. The more they say things that are plainly false, the more impossible this becomes.