Rep. Blake Moore said during a telephone town hall Tuesday that he thinks the Trump administration should adhere to a recent Supreme Court ruling ordering the White House to facilitate the return of a recently-deported Maryland man.
“There should be an honoring of the Supreme Court by saying, ‘This individual needs to be brought back and come through the process,’” Moore said Tuesday evening in response to a question from a constituent about President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
“That is something I clearly agree with, and honoring that is going to build the — I don’t want to say political capital, but I don’t know another term necessarily," the congressman added. “Just by honoring that due process, you’re going to get more support, I think, from Americans to continue and make sure that we do remedy the existing illegal immigration problem.”
Moore, who represents Utah’s 1st Congressional District, is the House Republican conference vice chair and the first Utahn to serve in House leadership. In an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune Wednesday, Moore said that over the course of the hour-long call, more than 14,000 people called in to hear his discussion with constituents, where he addressed several questions about immigration, tariffs and costs of living for Utahns and federal employees.
While Moore praised Trump’s border policies, he said he thinks some of the White House’s deportation efforts have been “difficult.”
“We have had a significant decrease in encounters at our southern border just in this time,” he said. “This should be the seminal win. … But then you always have the other side of it, and the deportations have been difficult, and it’s been tumultuous, and you’re seeing that there.”
The recent deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia has dominated headlines in recent weeks. Despite a 2019 court order that he should not be deported out of concern for his safety, the Maryland man was deported improperly earlier this year, and the Supreme Court recently ruled unanimously that the administration must facilitate Abrego Garcia‘s return to the United States. The White House has thus far largely refused to comply, despite originally admitting the deportation had been in error.
According to a New York Times report Wednesday, the administration recently sent a diplomatic note to officials in El Salvador about releasing Abrego Garcia, but Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s administration reportedly refused to assist with the release and return.
During Moore’s town hall Tuesday, he was pressed by a constituent about whether he considers Trump’s refusal to adhere to the court order an impeachable offense. The Utah representative said no.
“This Supreme Court has made some really solid and important decisions that I’ve supported — and that’s the point that I am making, is we have to make sure that the three branches of government do their will, but they have to be put in check with each other,” he said. “This is not something that is going to be an impeachment discussion.”
Moore also took a number of questions about Trump’s trade policies and spoke out against the president’s approach to tariffs.
“This is something that has not been difficult for me, to speak in opposition to some of the decisions that are being made at the administration level,” he said. “We are getting taken advantage of in a lot of different scenarios with regards to trade … but the approach taken with the specific numbers and the way that it’s been rolled out isn’t necessarily targeting those issues.”
Moore added that he would like to see more targeted and specific trade policies, and said, “Otherwise, we’re going to see a mass increase in prices across the country, and ... we do not think that our economy can handle that right now.”
Asked about a bill that attracted some support from Republican senators that would have given Congress power over tariffs instead of the White House, Moore said he was supportive of the idea.
“Let me be very, very simple and clear on this one,” he said, “not only would I have been apt to vote for that bill, I was ready to almost lead it in the House.”
Moore said that he does not see his stance on tariffs as being “antagonistic to the administration.”
“This is me being respectful to my Article 1 duty,” he said, referring to the constitutional power that gives Congress the right to “regulate Commerce with Foreign Nations.” “For whatever reason, over time, we have not only given [up] that power, we’ve lost that power.”
In the interview Wednesday, Moore reiterated this point.
“If that’s a bold stance to take,” he said, “we’re a long way from what the founders intended.”
