Trump: Send out the attack dogs

The Supreme Court in a 7-2 ruling Friday said the Trump administration violated the due process rights of Venezuelan migrants in its rushed effort to remove them from the U.S. last month using the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a 1798 wartime law.

Through its order, the Supreme Court extended its pause on AEA removals from the Northern District of Texas. However, the court did not determine whether the Trump administration can ultimately carry out removals using the AEA.

Instead, it asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to determine whether Trump’s [invocation] of the AEA was legal and how much notice is due to those targeted by the act.

[...]

While granting the migrants’ appeal, the Supreme Court also rebuked the Trump administration for not complying with its previous order on removals using the wartime act. In that order, SCOTUS said that those subject to removals must be given an adequate amount of notice and a change to challenge.

“Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,” the court said.

[...]

“The circumstances call for a prompt and final resolution, which likely can be provided only by this Court,” Kavanaugh said. “At this juncture, I would prefer not to remand to the lower courts and further put off this Court’s final resolution of the critical legal issues. Rather, consistent with the Executive Branch’s request for expedition—and as the detainees themselves urge—I would grant certiorari, order prompt briefing, hold oral argument soon thereafter, and then resolve the legal issues.”

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented to the court’s order.

  Democracy Docket

Of course they did.

        click here

SCOTUS on notice

U.S. District Court Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. is the first judge to rule that the Alien Enemies Act cannot be used against people who, the Republican administration claims, are gang members invading the United States. Rodriguez said he wouldn't interfere with the government's right to deport people in the country illegally through other means, but it could not rely on the 227-year-old law to do so.

“Neither the Court nor the parties question that the Executive Branch can direct the detention and removal of aliens who engage in criminal activity in the United States,” wrote Rodriguez, who was nominated by Trump in 2018. But, the judge said, "the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.”

  Atlanta Journal Consitution

Countdown to Trump and his acolytes calling for Judge Rodriguez to be impeached.

If the administration appeals, it would go first to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That is among the nation’s most conservative appeals courts and it also has ruled against what it saw as overreach on immigration matters by both the Obama and Biden administrations.

UPDATE 05/02/2025:

This particular case concerns individuals who are detained in that district—so in the Southern District of Texas. And that’s significant, and partially a result of the fact that the Supreme Court held that these challenges to the Alien Enemies Act had to proceed via habeas petitions. And so it’s in part because of that procedural posture that the district court said this ruling just applies to individuals who are being detained in the jurisdiction.

Of course, the Southern District of Texas is not the only place where the administration is detaining people and from where it might try to then summarily expel them to El Salvador. There’s still a ton of moving parts in this litigation. Another district court in the District of Colorado also concluded that individuals who were detained there could not be expelled under the Alien Enemies Act because the administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act was illegal. There are a few other temporary restraining orders that are in place: one in New York, another in the District of Massachusetts.

[...]

So it’s very possible we will soon get rulings from those judges that review the underlying merits about whether the administration can use the Alien Enemies Act at all in those jurisdiction, at least as applied to those individuals subject to the proclamation. But because the district judge issued a preliminary injunction, in this case the government can appeal that to the Fifth Circuit.

[...]

And so it’s possible this case will get up to the U.S. Supreme Court shadow docket rather quickly just as a request to stay that is put on hold this preliminary injunction ruling.

[...]

Again, there are so many different immigration detention facilities that the government still has the power to shuffle people around a fair amount. Some of the most recent horrifying expulsions we read about were carried out from Louisiana; those were the instances where the administration sent U.S. citizens to Honduras. But this is just the patchwork landscape that the Supreme Court has created.

[...]

I worry that people will give the Supreme Court a little bit too much credit for ruling against the Trump administration in a few cases as that administration’s popularity just plummets and ignore the ways in which the Supreme Court is furthering the administration’s ideological agenda in other cases and the ways in which they paved the way for the Trump administration in the first place.

[...]

[W]here did the president get this crazy idea that he is above the law and has unreviewable authority? He got it from his daddy Chief Justice Roberts and all of those guys.

[...]

[This] is one of the first cases that actually rules on whether the administration can use the Alien Enemies Act for this group of people at all. Thus far, the vast, vast majority of the rulings on these matters—again, except for that District of Colorado ruling—have been such preliminary relief that the district courts have not yet had occasion to really examine the underlying merits of the claims, that the administration just can’t use the Alien Enemies Act for this reason at all.

[...]

Donald Trump is basically invoking this idea of emergencies and exceptions to assert extraordinary powers. Here, he’s basically claiming there is a foreign invasion and incursion, therefore [he] can use this summary removal deportation procedure to remove and expel people under other processes that are basically less burdensome on the executive branch. In the cases of tariffs, he’s arguing there is some fentanyl crisis that warrants basically crashing the U.S. economy and the global economy. So there are a host of instances where he’s basically saying, There are emergencies that give me extraordinary powers, therefore no one can examine my powers. And this is just one example. And so it is heartening to have a district judge saying, Actually, that’s not how this works.

  New Republic

Trump's cruel and illegal deportations continue

 

UPDATE 05:13 pm:

UPDATE 05/15/2025:  This picture breaks my heart.

Defying the court without saying so

 

He won't stop

 

That's probably not good, then, is it?

Are they fucking serious?

 

Somebody actually thought that was worthy of a secret assessment by our intel agencies?  Or was it maybe ordered by a court?  That might make sense.

The National Intelligence Council, using findings from the 18 intelligence agencies, found in a secret assessment earlier this month that the Venezuelan government isn’t sending members of the prison gang Tren de Aragua to the U.S., according to The Washington Post.

[...]

Using the Alien Enemies Act, the Trump administration sent planes filled with alleged gang members to El Salvador’s infamous megaprison in the face of a judge’s order to turn the planes around to give the detainees due process.

[...]

Invoking the legislation last month, Trump said - without providing evidence - that the prison gang was conducting an “invasion” of the U.S. “at the direction” of the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

[...]

The assessment of the intelligence community ascertained that there are some contacts between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government at the lower levels, but the gang doesn’t follow orders from Maduro. Similarly, The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence found in February that the Venezuelan government doesn’t control the gang.

[...]

The National Intelligence Council, the nucleus of the U.S. intelligence community, reports to the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.

  UK Independent

So Trump's DNI has had that assessment since at least February, before Trump sent a plane load of people to El Salvador.

Boasberg is reaching the end of his rope

 

US District Judge James Boasberg ruled Wednesday that “probable cause exists” to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt for violating his orders in mid-March halting the use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.

The long-awaited decision on Wednesday from a judge President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly attacked puts the administration on the path toward being punished for thwarting court orders.

[...]

“The Court ultimately determines that the Government’s actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt,” Boasberg wrote in a 46-page ruling detailing his decision.

“The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions,” he added. “None of their responses has been satisfactory.”

[...]

Boasberg says he wants sworn statements first from people who can attest to the officials making the decisions not to turn the planes around as they carried migrants to El Salvador on March 15.

Then, Boasberg says, if those statements aren’t satisfactory to him, he will ask for live witnesses to testify at hearings or depositions.

The judge could then, he says, ask the Justice Department to prosecute Trump administration officials, or he could appoint an attorney as a special prosecutor.

  CNN

Obviously, he'd have to appoint a special prosecutor.

UPDATE 06:16 pm:

UPDATE 07:21 pm:

Trump 2.0 - Run to Daddy