Donald Trump's second White House seriously explored suspending a core constitutional protection to speed mass deportations and curb protests, according to newly disclosed internal memos written in Washington in 2025 by senior staff secretary Will Scharf. The confidential documents, detailed in reporting for the forthcoming book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, show that aides weighed using both the suspension of habeas corpus and the Insurrection Act as tools against unauthorised immigrants and demonstrators.
The revelations trace back to the early months of Trump's second term, after his emphatic 2024 election win emboldened a hard-line immigration drive from the Oval Office. Stephen Miller, restored as one of the most powerful figures in the West Wing, was again pressing sweeping measures to accelerate deportations and sideline the courts that had frustrated the first Trump administration. What had previously sounded like late-night cable talk was being turned into draft policy, routed through a small circle of loyalists and sceptics.
