In recent months, the radicalism of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda has come into focus, leaving many to wonder just how much further the Republican White House is prepared to go. It was against this backdrop that CNBC reported:
White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said Friday that the Trump administration is ‘actively looking at’ suspending habeas corpus, the right to challenge the legality of a person’s detention by the government. Miller’s comment came in response to a White House reporter who asked about President Donald Trump entertaining the idea of suspending the writ of habeas corpus to deal with the problem of illegal immigration into the United States.
“The Constitution is clear — and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of invasion,” the presidential adviser said. “So, that’s an option we’re actively looking at.”
Stephen Miller: "The writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So I would say that's an option we're actively looking at."
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2025-05-09T19:27:26.852Z
As part of the same comments, Miller went on to say that the White House’s actions will be guided by whether federal courts “do the right thing or not.”
In other words, if Miller and his colleagues are satisfied that judges are ruling in ways that satisfy the White House, then everything will be fine. If judges fail to make Team Trump happy, then Miller and his cohorts are “actively looking at” alternative ideas, such as suspending the writ of habeas corpus.
There are legal experts who can speak to this with greater authority than I can, but the basic idea behind habeas corpus is that people who are taken into custody by the government have a legal right to challenge their detention. To suspend habeas — something that happened during the U.S. Civil War, for example — is to allow the government to lock people up without charges and without the ability to contest incarceration.
This, according to Miller, is a point of discussion in the White House.








