President Donald Trump has ramped up his mass immigration drive in his second term, often at any cost. One of the main costs has been his attempts to circumnavigate parts of the Constitution that stood in his way — and the Library of Congress just mistakenly granted him his wish when they temporarily unpublished the article that discusses habeas corpus.
The Latin-originated phrase has long been difficult for most people to fully grasp — Trump’s administration foremost among them. When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was grilled by the senate, she erroneously stated the article means “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.”
At the time, the Trump administration was pushing the limits of how they were detaining suspected illegal immigrants. Some people were using legal means to actively seek reasons as to why they were being detained and were challenging that in court. Soon, Trump’s administration started blaming habeas corpus for slowing down deportation efforts. Stephen Miller confirmed as much in an interview, saying the administration was “actively looking” at suspending the clause and citing a potential legal interpretation that this could qualify as a “time of invasion.”
Trump, on the other hand, also later told an interviewer that he doesn’t know whether he has an obligation to uphold the Constitution. Habeas corpus simply ensures due process is maintained by requiring that anyone detained be presented in front of a judge. The act is so fundamental to democracy that Article 1, Section 9 determines it can only be suspended in cases of invasion or rebellion.
Then suddenly, the Library of Congress-maintained Constitution site saw its Article 1, Section 9 disappear — without explanation. Rolling Stone realized this and reached out to the Library of Congress for an explanation. They reportedly responded via email, “Due to a technical error, some sections of Article 1 were temporarily missing on the Constitution Annotated website. This problem has been corrected, and the missing sections have been restored.”
The Library of Congress then released a statement on the matter through their official X account, blaming the issue on coding. The statement assured the public that they were working on the issue. Later, they released another statement confirming that the article had now been reinstated on the website.
UPDATE: Missing sections of the Constitution Annotated website have been restored. Upkeep of Constitution Annotated and other digital resources is a critical part of the Library’s mission, and we appreciate the feedback that alerted us to the error and allowed us to fix it.…
— Library of Congress (@librarycongress) August 6, 2025
Now, obviously, whether or not the website includes the article doesn’t technically change the law. But in an age of increasingly online awareness, the move still caused concern. Reportedly, some federal employees even found the coincidence of that specific article’s disappearance to be particularly “funny.”
The Library of Congress is a branch of the judiciary, and the Trump administration doesn’t technically have any access to manipulate it, so this is seemingly a case of people just being over-vigilant. And that needs to be commended — because even if this wasn’t necessarily planned, it’s worth remembering that Trump has previously tried to fire the Librarian of Congress to gain more control of the Library of Congress, only to be blocked by the U.S. Court of Appeals.
