With Trump, this is especially true when it comes to immigration. He’s still betting that voters care more about deporting people who are in the country illegally than they care about such principles as due process, which dates back 200-plus years. Those are lofty words.

But is the Constitution still common ground? Not to President Trump, who approaches that sacred charter as a quaint concept that impedes his ability to do what he wants — break us down into the divided states of woke and MAGA. When he accepted the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award on Sunday for certifying the presidential election results on Jan. 6, 2021, after the attack on the US Capitol, former vice president Mike Pence said the Constitution is “the common ground on which we stand.

It’s what binds us together across time and across generations.” Advertisement During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press" that aired the same day Pence received his award, Trump was asked if he needed to uphold the Constitution. His answer was maybe. “I don’t know,” he said.

“I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.” Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up That response came during an exchange about immigration and whether noncitizens are entitled to due process. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent from Maryland to El Salvador without any due process and despite a previous court order saying he shouldn’t be deported there, has become the face of Trump’s disregard for constitutional rights.

In a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court directed the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return, but so far that has not happened. Advertisement Some of the government’s argument for resistance revolves around the meaning of “facilitate” and what the Trump administration actually has to do to bring about the return of Abrego Garcia. On “Meet the Press,” Trump said he has the power to ask for him to come back, if he’s instructed to do so by Attorney General Pam Bondi, “but the decision as to whether or not he should come back will be the head of El Salvador.” But Trump didn’t waste time pretending to care about legal nuance.

His main argument is that he’s doing what he promised voters he would do — deporting those who are here illegally. From that perspective, due process is a hindrance to his political mission. As he told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, “We have thousands of people that are some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on earth.

… And I was elected to get them the hell out of here and the courts are holding me from doing it.” It seems that Trump believes that delivering on what he campaigned on gives him every right to ignore the Fifth Amendment, which says that “no person” shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” He believes that the Constitution is trumped by the higher purpose of delivering on a political promise. MAGA loyalists believe that. But do most Americans?

A recent New York Times/Siena College poll offers some hope that Trump’s cynical calculation is wrong. Among those surveyed, 76 percent of voters and 61 percent of Republicans said a president should not be able to ignore the Supreme Court. While 54 percent supported the policy of deporting people who are here illegally back to their home countries, 51 percent said they disapprove of how Trump is handling immigration.

Advertisement That shows that there is a line, and that the line is rooted in some granular belief in constitutional rights and the rule of law. With noncitizens, Trump is pushing the line as far as he can — from Abrego Garcia, who was deported without due process on unsubstantiated allegations of gang membership, to Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University graduate student who was sent to a detention center in Louisiana without due process, apparently for cowriting an opinion piece that criticized the university’s response to the Israel-Hamas war. Trump is attacking the Constitution on every front, from ignoring the separation of powers to trampling free speech.

His funding freezes, dismantling of federal departments, attacks on judges and academia, and efforts to end birthright citizenship are an assault on the rule of law. That is his goal. After all, he began his second term by pardoning the rioters who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to stop the constitutional transfer of presidential power.

MAGA is with him, but what about everyone else? Pence received the JFK Profile in Courage Award for “putting his life and career on the line” to ensure that the Constitution was honored, and the constitutional transfer of presidential power took place. Advertisement In his acceptance speech he said the Constitution “levels every barrier of race and creed and religion.

It’s what makes us one people, one family.” Let’s hope he’s right. Joan Vennochi is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at joan.vennochi@globe.com.

Follow her @joan_vennochi.