The state determines what is legal and illegal. It's mostly irrelevant in the discussion of the evil that a state does. Apartheid was legal, so was slavery, so was the Holocaust

The administration has shown they have less than zero respect for any sort of laws or precedents set by the past, and at this point whether something is illegal just blends into the background, as you could say they do illegal things every day. Dangerous is a more fitting term to provide a sense of urgency