When President Donald Trump began quickly deporting migrants earlier this year to a brutal Salvadoran prison — including some unjustly — without due process, Democrats were a little wary of backing down.
Yes, the move seemed illegal and highly problematic. But didn’t Americans just want undocumented immigrants deported?
By defending due process, didn’t Democrats risk appearing to side with people in the country illegally — or even alleged gang members?
Well, it turned out that Americans could separate these two things in their minds.
Largely because of the harshness of his deportations, Trump’s immigration agenda suffered a series of court defeats and fell out of favor with the public.
Despite reducing the number of illegal border crossings to record lows, Trump is somewhat submerged in immigration polls.
Now we could be seeing a similar dynamic play out with those on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
The US military carried out these attacks without due process or offering public evidence of their justification.
The administration has compared the fight against drug traffickers to a literal war and said it allows it to use war-like powers.
Despite carrying out these offensives for more than two months and killing 80 people, we didn’t have a good reading of public opinion – until now. And it turns out that, just as with rapid deportations, the American public has real concerns.
A new Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Friday found that Americans oppose such attacks by a wide margin, 51% to 29%.
The question was whether people supported “authorizing the United States military to kill suspected drug traffickers outside the United States without prosecution.”
Independents opposed this 53%-22%. About twice as many Americans overall strongly oppose (34%) as strongly support (15%). And as many as 27% of Republicans were opposed.
These are the kinds of numbers that seem to suggest real political danger for Trump — and could encourage Democrats or other critics to start speaking out more forcefully.
Despite the extraordinary nature of these offensives and the major legal questions that loom over them, these critics have so far been relatively calm.
And they certainly have not sought to elevate this issue to a top priority.
We have the likes of libertarian Republican Senator Rand Paul speaking quite forcefully. Paul called the strikes “extrajudicial killings.” He and Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted with nearly all Democratic senators last month to rein in Trump’s authority over boat strikes. However, the measure was not approved.
Other lawmakers have called for more briefings from the administration, which has not publicly offered a legal justification for the attacks.
But it’s clear that Democrats decided to take a softer approach to the issue, perhaps fearing that they would appear to be defending drug traffickers.
Last week, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, even expressed confidence in the intelligence.
Warner suggested that whatever people’s concerns about the raids – and he himself expressed concerns about the administration’s transparency – they shouldn’t be too worried about them targeting innocent people.
But just days later, the Associated Press reported that some of those killed in the attacks appear to have been petty criminals and amateurs rather than the “narco-terrorists” the government said it was targeting.
This appears to be a live issue that will continue to evolve. And research suggests that those who have raised concerns have quite the audience behind them.
But actually, this shouldn’t be too surprising.
Time and time again, polls have suggested that the American people are actually very interested in upholding the principle of due process – the principle that says, yes, these may be criminals, but we should probably be sure of that and have some accountability. And this applies even to non-citizens.
A June poll from Vanderbilt University showed that support for deportations fell from 51% to 39%, when you add the qualifier that it would be done “without a formal hearing before a judge in immigration court.”
And a May Reuters-Ipsos poll showed that Americans (55%-41%) said people suspected of being in the country illegally are entitled to due process.
We’ll see if this data — and perhaps recent election results that suggest Trump is at a political low point — injects lawmakers with more willingness to fight this battle.
If nothing else, the downside of not speaking more forcefully also appears to be coming into focus.
Just this week, a report from human rights groups alleged that dozens of Venezuelans who were sent to prison were subjected to torture and other serious abuses such as sexual violence.
The report also reflected the trend of previous reports that, contrary to the administration’s claims, there is little evidence that many of these migrants were the criminals or gang members the administration said they were.
Given all this, you could understand why Americans might be skeptical about not just incarcerating people without due process, but killing them.
And it looks like they are.
