We are deeply concerned about the misrepresentations surrounding decisions by a federal judge, James E. Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C.

To be clear, Judge Boasberg has not ruled that criminal immigrants or violent immigrants cannot be deported.

What Boasberg has ruled is that the executive branch must follow the practices already in place to provide evidence than an immigrant is a felon or a violent criminal to justify a deportation order.

The right to due process is crucially important. The right to due process is not only about the rights of the accused. It is, in our view, as much about the public’s right to a judicial system that effectively identifies who among us is a threat and addresses those threats.

Allowing law enforcement to punish people without the checks and balances of hearings, evidence and, in some cases, trials carries with it certain unacceptable risks. We should not accept the use of police resources being squandered on punishing innocent people — particularly as those resources could instead be used to investigate guilty people, compile evidence of their guilt and successfully hold them accountable. Including, in some situations, with deportation.

We should not embrace the notion of a society that places such inordinate trust in the government that its actions are immune to transparent review by other, co-equal branches of government.

Our founding fathers understood that — it’s, in large part, why the United States is a democratic republic rather than a parliamentary democracy.

We want to see our authorities — federal and state, executive, legislative and judicial — work together to sort our immigrant population into those who are attempting to migrate here legally and peacefully and those whose criminal natures make them unfit for our society. And we want to see those in the latter category deported.

Because we believe deporting illegal immigrants, particularly those prone to violent crime, is necessary — as we have editorialized before.

We are confident that a majority of the immigrants in question have committed serious infractions and deserve to be deported.

But first, that confidence does not excuse skirting due process and the requirement that authorities present an independent, co-equal branch of government with the evidence to justify deportation. And second, we fear that a number of the immigrants in question have been misidentified and are not deserving of deportation.

Punishing the innocent erodes faith in our justice system. In this case, it will fill seats on planes to El Salvador that could be better filled with illegal immigrants against whom stronger, more conclusive evidence of violence and wrong-doing exists.

We should expect better of our society. The principle of due process, defended in this matter by Judge Boasberg, exemplifies that. We hope the White House and its supporters can better demonstrate that they also understand the importance of these crucial perimeters.