DHS Continues Fighting For Right To Disappear Anybody To Foreign Prisons, So That Is Bad!
They could do it to you!
It’s very telling that the Trump administration is extremely hot to trot to invent a right to disappear whomever they want into foreign prisons, for secret reasons.
Yesterday at 5 p.m., Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the US District Court for DC (small world, he was a law school housemate of Brett Kavanaugh’s at Yale) demanded that the Trump administration return the 200-something alleged Venezuelan immigrants that they deported with no due process and against his order, relying on Trump’s declaration that he was invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
And testy 20-something Karoline Leavitt peeled herself away from gushing about her “atypical” relationship with her crusty old husband to People Magazine and posing with accused Irish racist/rapist Conor McGregor to be like no, the DOJ didn’t defy a court order, because the plane had already landed. Then after it was clear Leavitt was busted lying about the timeline, she was like, the judge’s order wasn’t valid because it was an oral order, and by the time the written order came out, the alleged Venezuelans had already starred in a glossy infomercial for Salvadoran prisons, so, checkmate.
LEAVITT: There’s actually questions if a verbal order carries the same weight as a legal order, a written order.
NARRATOR: No, there are not.
But yesterday in court, DOJ lawyers knew better than to be the first lawyers ever to just ask questions about THAT point of law to the judge. Instead, they were like, we can’t tell you who the deportees are or what happened, it’s a big national security secret. And the judge was like, I’m the Chief Judge of the DC Circuit who’s done all the FISA, secret stuff is my thing! So let’s giddyup and take this somewhere secure, then!
And the DOJ lawyers were like ulp, er, no. Then the judge was like, also no immigrants were removed after my order went into effect, you say? How about you put all the things you’re trying to say in writing?
Then the DOJ lawyers were like wait, actually what we meant to say is you don’t have the authority! You’re not the boss of us! We have declared WAR INVASION! And the judge was like, fine, whatever. Get me some answers by noon on Tuesday (that’s today!) with the flight details, how many people were on that plane, how many more people you intend to stick on future planes, and what kind of legal basis you’re officially planning to pull out of your fartboxes and run up the flagpole to justify your non-answers. And then by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, we’ll have a hearing, and the lawyers for those five Venezuelans can tell me all of the ways you’re full of mierda.
The DOJ lawyers did not like that! They filed a request for the judge to vacate himself and cancel that hearing, because we didn’t break any laws and also you’re not the boss of us MOM! Then Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign ran to the court of appeals wah-wahing that the case should get a new judge because Boasberg is LIKE SO DUMB and just DOESN’T UNDERSTAND the “highly unusual and improper procedures” that the Venezuelans undertook by suing the government, or something.
Meanwhile relatives for the deported say that they’re struggling to get information, and that their loved ones were not in gangs.
As a sideshow, Elon Musk and Chuck Grassley stamped out stuff on Xitter about how the judge should be impeached, and pinworm Stephen Miller rr-grred that the judge was a “radical rouge.” Whatever, assholes.
They cannot wait for constitutional crises. It will be bloodless, if the Left allows it to be! And if not, Pete Hegseth can’t wait to Christian Crusade everybody, right into foreign black box prisons or under them.
And an update on Dr. Rasha Alawieh, the Brown University professor of kidney doctoring deported to Lebanon: Homeland Security is claiming she’s a terrorist now, because she posted support for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on social media, and they claim she attended his funeral. Assuming that’s true and they are even looking at posts by the same Rasha Alawieh, that’s what they’re doing, going through people’s social media looking for speech they have a problem with. Or at least speech they have a problem with is how Homeland Security is publicly justifying what they are doing with the doctor and Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil (who is still being detained in Louisiana), while at the same time in court saying that they should not have to present any kind of evidence in court to revoke somebody’s visa or green card in the first place, because it’s a dog of an argument. Instead, in court for Alawieh’s case, Customs and Border Protection went with “oopsie… too late, cry/laugh emoji,” claiming that they didn’t disobey a court order, because nobody told them in time that there was a court order, our lawyers must have misplaced the order, your honor.
This is all scary shit, in so many ways. The government has not even given an official count for how many people were on those planes, much less who they are or what evidence exists that they are gang members and criminals. They could be 14-year-old American citizens who were out selling Girl Scout cookies, for all anybody knows. And disappearances are already happening faster than courts can stop them (by design). In New Mexico, the ACLU is suing because 48 people there have simply disappeared, and there’s no information about them anywhere. If the administration gets away with this, there’s no civil rights for anybody.
Will SCOTUS let them get away with it? We shall see.
Sorry this is not a happier post!
[Washington Post archive link / JGG v Trump docket / Reuters archive link]
OK, I'm not making the claim that he's like Boebert here, but Musk is fucking dumb. There's a scale and he's definitely towards that end of it.
He's very talented at marketing, especially himself, but in terms of "knowing things" he's noticeably and often deficient. I think this is because he doesn't have to know. He can say utter crap, and he's not "pretending to be ignorant" to mislead- he genuinely thinks at the moment of speaking that he's saying something wise and insightful. He can say utter crap, though, because people around him will act like people around Trump do. By assuming he must know something, they bend in whatever shapes are necessary to make what he said sort of, kind of, maybe if you squint at it through a heat haze, true. They assume, as with Trump, that nobody could have the success Musk has without being clever, and if he's clever in one area then he's obviously going to be clever in others, even when they're deeply involved and arcane, like constitutional law.
He says things he wants to be the case, because they will get him a thing he wants, which most often is the ability to exploit other people, and then flunkies and journalists portray that as at least touching on something that is meaningful when actually it's just bollocks.
This is scary shit. I thought we'd have more time before the disappearings began. I am so stupid. Of course the disappearings have to start right away. That's how you terrorize your populace into compliance. Jesus, we live in Pinochet's Chile now.
ETA I had the wrong country in my initial post.