'Any of us can be picked up': Experts see danger on horizon as Trump expands crackdown

U.S. citizens have been mistakenly detained in president Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, but civil rights lawyers are gearing up for a fight over expanding those operations to deliberately target American citizens.

The president has made clear he would like to rendition "homegrown" criminals to El Salvador, and Trump officials and allies have alarmed civil libertarians by suggesting that administration critics could be, as White House senior director for counterterrorism Seb Gorka said, "aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists" by standing in the way of administration priorities, reported Axios.

"They're trying to use terrorism laws to attack people for their speech and for their political activism, and that's an authoritarian effort," said Kerri Talbot, co-executive director of the Immigration Hub advocacy group.

ALSO READ: 'We’ve made a mistake': Trump’s trade war sends GOP into frenzy

The administration has refused to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was legally living in the U.S. with a court order prohibiting his deportation back to El Salvador, and they have challenged a U.S. Supreme Court order to "facilitate" his return, arguing they did not have to "effectuate" it, and the resulting confusion could lay the groundwork to expand the deportations to include citizens.

"If they can send a noncitizen to a prison in El Salvador without due process ... why would a U.S. citizen be safer?" said Michelle Brané, former executive director of the Biden administration's Family Reunification Task Force.

Federal appeals court judge Harvie Wilkinson III wrote a scathing rebuke of the administration, saying their actions in the Abrego Garcia case were a dangerously slippery slope.

“If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?” wrote Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee. “And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment, but Trump officials have argued that opposition to their policies goes against the will of voters, but Talbot sees the same dangers on the horizon as Wilkinson.

"People are realizing that this is going to impact all communities," Talbot said, "and that if one citizen can be picked up, then any of us can be picked up and put into proceedings, or labeled a terrorist, or removed to a foreign prison."