During an interview this past weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked whether those on U.S. soil are entitled to due process.

While Rubio admitted that due process is an important principle, he made clear that it will not stop the Trump administration from enforcing immigration law. 

"If you’re in this country unlawfully, you have no right to be here"

"In immigration standing, the laws are very specific.  If you’re in this country unlawfully, you have no right to be here, and you must be removed.  That’s what the law says," Rubio noted.

Marco Rubio on Meet the Press defends the Trump administration deporting US citizen children pic.twitter.com/dsXFWxIrmH

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 27, 2025

"Somehow, over the last 20 years, we’ve completely lost this notion that somehow – or completely adopted this idea that, yes, we have immigration laws but once you come into our country illegally it triggers all kinds of rights that can keep you here indefinitely," he complained.

"That’s why we were being flooded at the border," the secretary argued. "And we’ve ended that, and that’s why you don’t – you see a historically low number of people not just trying to cross our border but trying to cross the border into Panama all the way down in the Darién Gap."

Welker mentions case of American-born toddler

Rubio's remarks came after "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker brought up the case of illegal migrant Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela and her two-year-old American-born daughter, who has only been identified at V.M.L.

According to the Daily Mail, Villela was sent to Honduras immigration check-in at the New Orleans office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

V.M.L. departed with her mother, a development which was met with condemnation from Judge Terry A. Doughty, who presides over the Western District of Louisiana.

"The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her," The New York Post quoted Doughty as writing in an order issued this past Thursday.

Judge suspects that a U.S. citizen was deported "with no meaningful process"

"But the court doesn’t know that," Doughty continued, adding that "it is illegal and unconstitutional to deport" to deport a U.S. citizen.

Doughty went on to schedule a hearing for May 16 to address his "strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process."

His remarks came in response to a petition filed by V.M.L.'s custodian, Trish Mack, who asserted that the girl's father had objected to Villela taking their daughter to Honduras.

The petition further asserted that V.M.L.'s detention lacked "any basis in law and violates her fundamental due process rights."