Frustrated with mounting losses in court, key officials in Donald Trump's administration were seriously considering the suspension of a centuries-old constitutional right to speed up the president's anti-immigration campaign to deport tens of thousands of people from the country. An explosive secret memo last year appears to address concerns among White House officials about a plan to suspend habeas corpus, a fundamental due process right enshrined in the constitution to allow those detained by the government to challenge their imprisonment. Trump, just months into his second presidency, was already facing desperate warnings from critics and legal scholars that his defiance of court orders had reached a dangerous constitutional crossroads. His suspension of a constitutional right would have escalated his war with a judiciary that he has seen as insufficiently deferential to his presidency and an obstacle in the way of his agenda.