Stop The Presses, The Supreme Court Told Trump NO, For A Change!
Temporarily, but it’s something.
There’s about 28 fewer Venezuelans than were planned to be in Donald Trump’s Salvadoran gulag today, for now, after ACLU lawyers got the Supreme Court to stop deportations under the Alien Enemies Act that were fixing to happen with no due process at around 1 a.m. on Saturday morning. Good! Surprising! Could it be the Supremes maybe getting tired of Trump openly ignoring them? About time!
You’ll recall on April 7 the Court ruled unanimously that detainees were required to get notice that they were subject to removal, and be allowed to challenge that removal in a “reasonable time” before it happens. Bare minimum stuff. BUUUT, along with bringing Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from the gulag, the administration just doesn’t wanna.
Immediately after that Supreme Court decision, litigants got Temporary Restraining Orders against AEA removals in three different district courts: the Southern District of New York, the District of Colorado, and the Southern District of Texas. So then what did those ballsy motherfuckers in this administration do? Why, they loaded the detainees on a bus and sent them to a detention facility in the Northern District of Texas, like this was some kind of loophole. And the “notice” they gave detainees was just a one-page English-only sheet with no information on it suggesting they could challenge the order, or how they might go about doing that. But, ICE are not monsters! If you want to call your family and tell them you’re going to be disappearing to foreign prison, you may have one phone call to do so. You’re welcome!
The ACLU had already filed a habeas petition on Wednesday in the Northern District of Texas on behalf of two plaintiffs, named as A.A.R.P. and W.M.M., which was denied by a judge because the government said the two were not in imminent risk of removal. So, when the ACLU got wind of this fuckery of buses being loaded up anyway, they immediately sought review from the original judge in the case in Northern Texas, and also with Judge Boasberg, and also sought emergency relief from both the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court.
Then Friday evening, Judge Boasberg (who had just spent the entire day and week presiding over the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit against Meta, poor guy) held an emergency hearing, in which DOJ lawyer Drew Ensign was like, there’s no flights leaving tonight or tomorrow, and those people are just being moved to the Northern District of Texas because the government moves people “all of the time,” just because it feels like it! Nothing to see here!
Judge Boasberg ended up denying relief because he didn’t think he had the jurisdiction, but SCOTUS took up the case while the buses were on the move, jumping over the Fifth Circuit to do it. It was as if seven of the The Supremes didn’t appreciate the way the government was in-their-face ignoring them, and didn’t believe the government when they said no planes would be leaving imminently. Is it slowly becoming real for them that the administration is full of crap? Sure sounds like it!
Sam Alito — one of the two justices who dissented, one guess who the other one is — is MAD MAD that he got awakened in the middle of the night, was forced to make a decision while still in his pajamas, and that the rest of the judges did not even let him take all night to hammer out his five-page dissent before releasing their opinion. Surely it was a work of art, full of the technical excuses he would have given to let the administration keep violating their ruling, fussing that the “unprecedented” relief was “hastily and prematurely granted.” The administration said there were no planes leaving, and when has Donald Trump ever lied to you? Wouldn’t want to be too hasty about not disappearing people to foreign prison!
Never mind how NBC News got video of buses in Texas on Friday headed towards the airport and then literally turning around while Judge Boasberg was having that hearing.
By the way, Some People Are Saying that the wording of the order, “There is before the Court an application," rather than, “The application presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court,” means hat Alito failed to refer the application to the full Court, forcing the Chief to step in and bring it before the Court before the planes could take off. Just speculation, of course, but you can’t put it past Alito.
Are we sure he isn’t a gang member? We’ve seen the same amount of evidence about his gang activities as we have about these Venezuelans, just saying, maybe!
[Steve Vladeck / NBC News]
As a lot of legal experts have pointed out, the fact that the court rushed a decision out at 1am on a Saturday tells us a couple things:
1) The majority does not trust this regime any farther than it could throw them.
2) The judiciary’s almost reflexive deference to the government’s positions is starting to wear out.
"JD killed the Pope" works the same way "JD fucks couches" does. It may not be true, but no one has any problem believing it might be. And it sounds funny when you say it. Except for the part about the Pope dying.