WASHINGTON, D.C. — For years, Senator Jeff Merkley has been one of the most consistent voices in the Democratic Party on issues of immigration, due process, and human rights. But in the final weeks of 2025, as President Donald Trump’s second-term deportation machine accelerates into a new and deeply controversial phase, Merkley has emerged as the loudest national critic of what he now openly calls a “shadow deportation state.”

The Oregon Democrat, soft-spoken by reputation but increasingly fiery in tone, has taken direct aim at the administration’s expanding use of the Alien Enemies Act, its bypassing of immigration courts, and its refusal to return migrants who were deported in defiance of judicial orders. And unlike others in his caucus, Merkley has not limited his concerns to broad moral arguments. Instead, he has characterized what is unfolding as a constitutional emergency, where an American president is “snatching people off the streets and deporting them without due process.”

“These are not just policy disagreements,” Merkley warned during a late-November floor speech. “This is about whether the executive branch can simply erase the law when it becomes inconvenient.”

His comments, which echoed a viral post he shared on X during the long, bruising autumn shutdown, underscore an intensifying clash between the administration’s maximalist interpretation of executive immigration authority and a coalition of Democrats now sounding alarms that migrant expulsions are slipping outside constitutional bounds.

A Senator Whose Warnings Long Preceded 2025

Merkley’s profile on immigration began rising years before Trump’s second term. In 2018, he rocketed into the national spotlight after the now-infamous moment when federal agents blocked him from entering a Texas child detention center. In 2019, he exposed internal plans to deny asylum seekers access to ports of entry and protested DHS raids designed to bypass warrants. In 2020, he helped lead the effort to stop the extrajudicial expulsion of migrant children without hearings — a policy advocates said placed minors in life-threatening danger.

That early activism forms the backbone of Merkley’s current argument: that America is not simply repeating the harshest practices of Trump’s first term, but expanding into something more sweeping and legally unrestrained.

“This is not Title 42. This is not expedited removal,” Merkley said at a November committee hearing. “This is deportation without process — something this country has never accepted.”

A Collision Course With the Alien Enemies Act

Much of Merkley’s ire now centers on the Trump administration’s renewed use of the Alien Enemies Act, an obscure 1798 law originally intended for wartime expulsions. In March, when the administration deported a group of Venezuelan detainees to El Salvador despite a federal judge’s order to turn the plane around, Merkley said the country crossed a red line.

“Defying a court order is not toughness. It is lawlessness,” he said in an emergency press briefing. “If this precedent stands, no American’s due process rights are safe.”

He and Senator Ron Wyden sent multiple letters to Attorney General Pam Bondi demanding the wrongful deportees — including Maryland father Kilmar Abrego García — be returned. The administration did not comply. Instead, DHS insisted the judge’s oral directive was “nonbinding.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Merkley said. “Not under Reagan, not Bush, not Trump’s first term. This is new.”

The Abrego case became a symbol for Merkley of a deeper rot: the possibility that the executive branch could decide which judicial orders to honor and which to ignore.

A Global Crisis Meets Domestic Overreach

By late 2025, the administration had deported thousands under the Alien Enemies Act and other accelerated pathways, including Venezuelan, Afghan, Somali, and Salvadoran nationals. Some were longtime U.S. residents. Some had pending asylum claims. Several, Merkley said, never received hearings at all.

“These are human beings,” Merkley repeated in a 22-hour Senate speech during the shutdown — one of the longest modern Senate addresses, rivaled only by long-form filibusters of previous decades. “They have families. They have lives here. And they have rights guaranteed by the Constitution.”

Republicans mocked the marathon speech as political theater. Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso called it “a cry for attention during a shutdown he helped create.”

But Merkley’s rhetoric resonated across immigrant communities and among civil liberties groups, who say he has become the only senator consistently documenting alleged abuses in real time.

The Fight Over “Snatching People Off the Streets”

Merkley’s most explosive comments came in November, after reports that ICE and Border Patrol were detaining individuals at bus stops, grocery store parking lots, and the entrances of immigration court buildings — sometimes without warrants.

He posted:

“President Trump is out of control. He is snatching people off the streets and deporting them without due process. This is not who we are.”

The Biden-era DHS leadership was already facing pressure from Republicans for being too lenient. Now Merkley is arguing the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction — and that some deportations may in fact be illegal.

In a May hearing, Merkley grilled FBI Director Kash Patel over whether Venezuelans recently deported to El Salvador were afforded the right to counsel or even a basic hearing. Patel said he would “defer to DHS,” raising more questions than answers.

Family Separation, Again

Merkley has accused the administration of quietly reinstating forms of family separation by expediting deportations of parents while their U.S.-citizen children remain behind. Advocacy groups say such cases are increasing, especially under the renewed use of expedited removal, where asylum seekers may be removed within days.

“America learned this lesson once,” Merkley told reporters on the Capitol steps. “We do not separate families. We do not punish children for seeking safety.”

Democrats Divided, Courts Intervening

While nearly all Democrats oppose Trump’s immigration approach rhetorically, Merkley is one of the few demanding legal interventions, not just policy changes.

He filed an amicus brief in October supporting legal challenges to the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, calling it an “abusive distortion” of 18th-century wartime authority.

The Supreme Court has accepted several emergency petitions for 2026 review, setting up a major fight that could define executive immigration power for decades.

The Merkley Vision: Oversight, Transparency, Humanity

Merkley’s message is simple but forceful: America can enforce immigration laws without abandoning its constitutional principles.

Whether confronting Pam Bondi in hearings, demanding accountability from ICE and CBP, or calling out what he calls “performative cruelty,” Merkley is positioning himself as the Senate’s fiercest defender of due process in an era of accelerated removals.

“Legal rights do not disappear because an administration wants speed,” he said. “Due process is not optional. It is a cornerstone of American freedom.”

Looking Ahead: A Long Fight in a Divided Congress

With the Trump administration pushing for deportations on a scale unseen in modern history — targeting up to 11 million undocumented immigrants — the political battle is only deepening. Republicans tout the crackdown as long overdue. Merkley warns it risks ensnaring U.S. citizens, legal residents, asylum seekers, and long-settled families.

For now, Merkley remains undeterred.

“You can’t run a democracy from the shadows,” he said in a recent podcast interview. “And you can’t tear away due process without tearing away freedom from all of us.”

Whether his warnings shape the debate or get steamrolled by a Republican majority remains an open question — but for millions of families watching nervously, Merkley has become the senator willing to say the part others whisper.