Claims from both Cabinet members highlighted their incompetence and the rank bottom to which administration officials are willing to stoop in service of Trump and Miller’s anti-immigrant obsession
During a U.S. Senate hearing this week on the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) upcoming budget request, Secretary Kristi Noem confidently asserted that habeas corpus – the basic legal principle that allows detained people to challenge their detention by the federal government – is actually all about her boss. Nope, not Stephen Miller. Donald Trump.
Many observers rightly focused on the complete absurdity of Noem’s claim – and it was so factually incorrect it should count as one of the most alarming moments from any Cabinet official in recent memory – it also highlights the rank bottom to which these officials are willing to stoop in order to spread disinformation in service of the administration’s mass deportation obsession. Because when confronted with the facts, Noem refused to budge from her stream of propaganda.
HASSAN: What is habeas corpus?NOEM: Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country HASSAN: That's incorrect
“What is habeas corpus?” New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan asked during Tuesday’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Senate Committee. “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right,” Noem began. So far so good. But that lasted about a tenth of a second before Noem veered off into absolutely bananas territory, claiming that habeas corpus actually gives the president the power “to remove people from this country.” So she’s claiming the legal principle that you should be able to petition the government is actually Trump’s pass to disappear people from the country? Noem was quickly cut off by an astounded Senator Hassan.
“Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires the government to provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people,” Senator Hassan interjected. “If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason.”
KIM: Do you know what section of the Constitution the suspension clause of habeas corpus is in?NOEM: I do not. Nope.KIM: Do you know which article is it in?NOEM: I do not, sir.
Of course, it’s one thing for any regular person on the street to not be familiar with this term. But Noem is no layperson, as MSNBC’s Steve Benen wrote. “If anyone should have a rudimentary understanding of what habeas corpus is, it’s the secretary of homeland security.” Nor did Noem even remotely try to correct her error, and throughout the hearing further refused to directly answer numerous questions concerning the rule of law.
Senator Hassan’s factual statement that the Trump administration has been defying court orders, for example, was met with defiance of its own:
HASSAN: If POTUS tries to suspend habeas corpus & a federal court reverses him, will you comply w/the court order, or will you follow POTUS's directive?NOEM: We are following all federal court ordersH: That is not true for anybody who reads the newsN: I wouldn't rely on the news for your facts
And when Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin pressed Noem to acknowledge that her department has illegally removed U.S. citizens – which has absolutely happened – she astoundingly denied the factual statement. “We have not deported US citizens,” Noem falsely said. Several Americans might disagree with that, including a child with stage four cancer. When questioned about whether U.S. citizen kids have been removed from their own country, Noem claimed that mothers chose to take them with them. Wrong.
“Legal counsel for the two Louisiana families tells Rolling Stone that both mothers say they were not given the option of keeping their U.S. citizen children in the country,” the outlet reported about the illegal removal of three American kids. “They say the mothers were told their children were being deported alongside them, despite their citizenship status and even though both families had lawful custodians willing to take custody of the children.”
U.S. Sen. Slotkin (D-MI) to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after she botched the definition of habeas corpus:“You sat here in front of all of us and swore an oath to the constitution, and that is not at all what habeas corpus is. It’s a right we all get, that American citizens get…"
— Heartland Signal (@heartlandsignal.bsky.social) 2025-05-20T20:01:50.147Z
And when questioned if U.S. citizens have been unlawfully detained by federal immigration officials, Noem stated that some have been “interviewed.” How quaint. One American “interviewed” by Noem’s agents was wrongfully detained for ten days after he got lost and asked a Border Patrol agent for help. While U.S. citizen Jose Hermosillo tried to explain that he was an American, he was ignored. “They say, tell your lawyer,” he said during the “interview.”
Fabian Schmidt, a green card-holder from New Hampshire, was also “interviewed” by Noem’s agents, locked away at an ICE facility for two months after being “violently interrogated and strip-searched” after arriving to Logan Airport in Boston this past March. He’s finally free. Andry Hernández Romero, one of the many innocent men disappeared to El Salvador, deserves his freedom too. Instead, he’s marking his 32nd birthday in a foreign gulag. During a recent House hearing, Noem refused to provide any updates on the makeup artist’s status or even commit to telling his mom if he’s still alive:
Garcia to Noem: "Can you commit to just letting his mother know mother to mother if Andry is alive? He was given an asylum appointment by the United States government."(Noem wouldn't commit to it.)
But Noem wasn’t alone in playing to an audience of Trump and Miller. During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the State Department’s budget request, Secretary Marco Rubio continued to spread disproven claims about Maryland dad Kilmar Abrego García, falsely calling the union brother and father a “gang member.” This has been a lie disproven by a judge appointed by the Trump administration, who “found he was a victim of a gang in El Salvador, and not a member of a gang by any stretch,” as The Signorile Report said last month. In fact, dozens of the men shipped to CECOT arrived in the U.S. legally, as Cato Institute said in a new report.
Then, a cherry on top of the propaganda cake, Rubio repeated a lie that originated from El Salvador President Nayib Bukele and his regime, which claimed that Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen and Abrego García shared alcoholic drinks when they met in El Salvador on April 17. “The senator said those glasses were put on the table partway during the meeting by El Salvador officials and that neither he nor the deportee touched the drinks,” as ABC News reported.
Rubio, a one-time critic of oppressive regimes, was still more than happy to continue spewing this dictator’s baseless lie. Still, an unsurprising act by Miller’s new lapdog:
Rubio spreads misinformation about Van Hollen's trip to El Salvador and meeting with Abrego Garcia: "We deported gang members, including the one you had a margarita with. And that guy is a human trafficker. And that guy is a gang member."
But in perhaps the most alarming moment of the hearing, Rubio, who unlike Miller actually studied law and is eligible to practice in his home state of Florida, claimed judges have no authority over him. No, really:
“There is a division in our government between the federal branch and the judicial branch. No judge, and the judicial branch, cannot tell me or the president how to conduct foreign policy,” Rubio screeched. “No judge can tell how I have to outreach to a foreign partner or what I need to say to them. And if I do reach to that foreign partner and talk to them, I am under no obligation to share that with the judiciary branch.”
“First of all, Rubio completely gets the branches of government wrong, as there are three of them: the executive branch, consisting of the presidency; the legislative branch, comprising Congress; and the judicial branch, made up of the federal court system,” The New Republic reported. “But perhaps even more troubling, Rubio also declared that he did not believe in the Constitution’s separation of powers, in which the three branches exist together in a system of checks and balances.”
But when Rubio can’t even stand up for himself, how can he be expected to stand up for our Constitution and its freedoms? A one-time champion of a pathway to citizenship for immigrant contributors like Abrego García, he’s now a mass deportation assistant to Miller despite the fact that Miller worked to derail his 2016 run. The difference now is that Rubio is useful to his anti-immigrant obsession.
Rosen to Rubio: "I'm not even mad anymore about your complicity in this administration's destruction of US global leadership. I'm simply disappointed. And I wonder if your proud of yourself in this moment when you go home to your family … I know you know this in your heart."
During the hearing, Nevada’s Jacky Rosen tried to appeal to her former Senate colleague’s better nature (or what’s left of it) and asked if he’s “proud of yourself in this moment when you go home to your family.” We already know the appeal that his late mom once made, in a voicemail that he played for reporters more than a decade ago. In it, the Cuban exile pleaded for him to not betray immigrant communities.
“Tony, some loving advice from the person who cares for you most in the world,” the late Oriales García Rubio said in a voicemail he played for Time. “Don’t mess with the immigrants, my son. Please, don’t mess with them … They’re human beings just like us, and they came for the same reasons we came. To work. To improve their lives. So please, don’t mess with them.” If only he’d remember those words.
