Vice President JD Vance called Chief Justice John Roberts’ comments earlier this month that the judiciary’s role is to check the executive branch a “profoundly wrong sentiment” and said the courts should be “deferential” to the president, particularly when it comes to immigration.
“I thought that was a profoundly wrong sentiment. That’s one half of his job, the other half of his job is to check the excesses of his own branch. And you cannot have a country where the American people keep on electing immigration enforcement and the courts tell the American people they’re not allowed to have what they voted for,” Vance told New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat on the “Interesting Times” podcast, which was taped on Monday.
Vance was responding to Roberts’ remarks at an event in Buffalo, New York, where the chief justice stressed the importance of judicial independence. “The judiciary is a coequal branch of government, separate from the others with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law, and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president,” Roberts said at the event.
The judiciary’s role, Roberts added, is to “decide cases but, in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or of the executive and that does require a degree of independence.”
Vance’s interview with The Times, which was taped in Rome after he attended the inaugural mass for Pope Leo XIV, also delved into the vice president’s Catholic faith and how it shapes his role as a political leader.
While Vance said he believes the administration has “an obligation to treat people humanely,” he also said it’s an “open question” how much due process is “due” to undocumented immigrants.
“I’ve obviously expressed public frustration on this, which is yes, illegal immigrants, by virtue of being in the United States, are entitled to some due process,” Vance said. “But the amount of process that is due and how you enforce those legislative standards and how you actually bring them to bear is, I think, very much an open question.”
On Friday, the Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump from moving forward with deporting a group of immigrants in northern Texas under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act – a win for Venezuelans who feared they were going to be removed under the wartime authority. The administration invoked the powers earlier this year to speed deportations of alleged gang members and has cited national security concerns.
Asked about the justification for using those legal authorities to deport people, Vance conceded that “we don’t have 5 million uniform combatants.” But he pointed to thousands of migrants who he said, without evidence, “intentionally came to the United States to cause violence” to argue that courts need to be deferential to the president on what he called a “public safety” issue.
“I think that the courts need to be somewhat deferential. In fact, I think the design is that they should be extremely deferential to these questions of political judgment made by the people’s elected president of United States,” Vance said. “People under appreciate the level of public safety stress that we’re under when the president talks about how bad crime is.”
When asked how he would define success on immigration after Trump’s term, Vance also pointed to the courts.
“Success, to me, is not so much a number, though, obviously I’d love to see the gross majority of the illegal immigrants who came in under Biden deported,” Vance said. “Success, to me, is that we have established a set of rules and principles that the courts are comfortable with and that we have the infrastructure to do that, allows us to deport large numbers of illegal aliens when large numbers of illegal aliens come into the country.”
Vance acknowledged he’s sometimes had to reconcile his faith with the administration’s policy decisions while going on to defend its actions on immigration.
“I understand your point and making these judgments, if you take the teachings of our faith seriously, they are hard. I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t struggled with some of this, that I haven’t thought about whether, you know, we’re doing the precisely right thing,” Vance told Douthat.
“The concern that you raise is fair, there has to be some way in which you’re asking yourself as you go about enforcing the law – even, to your point, against a very dangerous people – that you’re enforcing the law consistent with, you know, the Catholic Church’s moral dictates and so forth.”
Douthat interjected, “And American law and basic principles.”
“Most importantly, American law,” Vance said.
Asked about his disagreements on immigration with Popes Francis and Leo, Vance – who said he was wearing a tie Francis gifted him before his death – said that you have to “hold two ideas in your head at the same time” about enforcing border laws and respecting the dignity of migrants.
“I’m not saying I’m always perfect at it. But I at least try to think about, okay, there are obligations that we have to people who, in some ways, are fleeing violence or at least fleeing poverty. I also have a very sacred obligation, I think, to enforce the laws and to promote the common good of my own country, defined as the people with the legal right to be here,” Vance said.
“I really do think that social solidarity is destroyed when you have too much migration too quickly,” he added. “And so that’s not because I hate the migrants, or I’m motivated by grievance. That’s because I’m trying to preserve something in my own country where we are a unified nation.”
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