Washington DC - A senior White House official said Friday that President Donald Trump is looking at suspending habeas corpus, the right of a person to challenge their detention in court – a cornerstone of the rule of law.

"The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion," White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters.

"So it's an option we're actively looking at," Miller said. "A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not."

Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of people and has repeatedly referred to their presence in the US as an "invasion."

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Since taking office in January, Trump has been waging an all-out war on immigrants' rights, but his efforts have met with pushback from multiple federal courts.

Among other measures, the Republican president invoked an obscure wartime law in March to summarily deport hundreds of people accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador.

Several federal courts have blocked further deportations using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and the Supreme Court also weighed in, saying people must be given an opportunity to legally challenge their removal in court.

The Alien Enemies Act was last used to round up Japanese-Americans during World War II and was previously invoked during the War of 1812 and World War I.

Habeas corpus – declared by the Supreme Court as a "fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action" – has been suspended only rarely in US history, most notably by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and in Hawaii after the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.