How Much Will the Supreme Court Let Trump Get Away With? We Got an Ominous Sign This Week.

Yahoo

3 days ago

Donald Trump won the presidency in part on promises to deport immigrants who have criminal records and lack permanent legal status. But his earliest executive orders—trying to undo birthright citizenship, suspending critical refugee programs—made clear he wants to attack immigrants with permanent legal status too. In our series Who Gets to Be American This Week?, we'll track the Trump administration's attempts to exclude an ever-growing number of people from the American experiment.
For the past six months, President Donald Trump and his administration have contorted, stress-tested, and outright violated law to achieve his delusional 1 million deportations goal. The judicial system has been a critical check, forcing the federal government to follow the law—and at times it has worked as intended. But the Supreme Court has been throwing wrenches in our legal machinery that often seem to defy logic. In an order released this week, the court's conservative justices signaled they are unwilling to stand up to the Trump administration and would rather allow the White House to simply defy our justice system as it pleases.
Meanwhile, one victim of the Trump administration's lawlessness, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was finally brought back to the U.S. after being mistakenly deported four months ago. But thanks to a newly unveiled criminal indictment and a pending immigration detainer, it's highly unlikely that he will be returning home to his wife and children anytime soon.
Here's the immigration news we're keeping an eye on this week:
Less than three months after the Supreme Court shot down an injunction preventing deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, it released another historic shadow docket decision. The majority of the justices chose to lift a lower court judge's injunction that had, up until Monday, prevented the federal government from removing immigrants from the U.S. to third countries, instead of their home country of origin, without at least giving them advance notice and allowing them to object on the grounds that they face torture there.
'The court's order is certainly apt to have immediate and devastating consequences for all those in the crosshairs of the administration's chaotic and increasingly random deportation campaign,' Deborah Pearlstein, director of Princeton University's Program in Law and Public Policy and a professor of law and public affairs, told me. 'Moreover, it sends a really frightening signal about whether the court is going to stand up to what are increasingly blatant instances of administration defiance of court orders.'
The Supreme Court's intervention comes after the Trump administration repeatedly violated U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy's orders by attempting to send migrants to South Sudan, Libya, and El Salvador. The targets of this scheme argue that they will be tortured and killed if removed to these countries, making their expulsions unlawful under the Convention Against Torture and various federal laws. Murphy ruled that, at a minimum, the government must tell migrants where they are being sent, and give them an opportunity to object, with the assistance of counsel, on the grounds that they'll be tortured there. Roughly two weeks after Murphy issued his injunction mandating this due process, the Trump administration defied it. And yet, on Monday, SCOTUS rewarded the government by sweeping away the injunction and allowing these potentially lethal removals to resume.
The high court's decision shocks the conscience, as it effectively allows the federal government to get away scot-free with defying a lower court judge's order, establishing an extraordinarily dangerous precedent. It also subjects thousands of migrants to potential torture and death overseas in clear violation of federal law. And the justices offered zero explanation, since they issued their order on the shadow docket.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote a scathing dissent. 'Apparently, the court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in far-flung locales more palatable,' Sotomayor wrote, 'than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled.'
The Supreme Court's decision is especially alarming in light of a new whistleblower complaint, Pearlstein noted. In the complaint, a Justice Department lawyer accused Emil Bove III, Trump's former personal attorney who has been named principal associate deputy attorney general, of telling subordinates he was willing to ignore court orders to fulfill Trump's mass deportation agenda. (Trump has nominated Bove to a federal appeals court; at his Senate hearing on Thursday, Republicans dismissed the complaint as partisan retribution.)
'I feel less confident in the court's willingness to stand up for an independent judiciary than at any point since Trump's inauguration,' Pearlstein said.
After being mistakenly deported to El Salvador, denied due process, and placed in the country's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center for roughly three months, 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego Garcia was finally brought back to the U.S. this month. Now he faces a dubious federal indictment and is in federal custody. And despite U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara D. Holmes declaring he's eligible for pretrial release, it's unlikely he'll be going back to his family in Maryland anytime soon.
On June 13, Abrego Garcia saw his wife and mother for the first time since before his March deportation, in a Tennessee courtroom where his lawyers argued against the Department of Justice's allegations that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang and smuggled migrants across the country. During a hearing over whether he should be held in pretrial detention, Abrego Garcia's defense attorney insisted he doesn't pose a serious flight risk, arguing that the government provided 'zero' facts to prove that his client has a history of evading arrest or engaging in willful international travel recently, or has strong relations in countries that cause him to seek refuge there or any prior felony convictions.
Over the weekend, Judge Holmes ultimately agreed. She noted that the government's evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13 'consists of general statements, all double hearsay, from two cooperating witnesses,' both of whom have serious criminal histories and hope to avoid deportation or prison time if they cooperate with prosecutors. The very same day that Holmes ordered Abrego Garcia's release, government lawyers filed a motion to stay her decision.
Homeland Security has an active immigration detainer against Abrego Garcia, which the Department of Justice says means 'he will remain in custody pending deportation and Judge Holmes' release order would not immediately release him to the community under any circumstance.'
Abrego Garcia says he was fleeing death threats and extortion by a local gang when he first entered the U.S. in 2012 at 16 years old. In 2019, he was arrested for loitering but had no previous criminal record, and a judge granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador, where he allegedly faced persecution. Despite that, the Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia in March—a move that officials admitted was an error—on flights that took off in defiance of a judge's restraining order. And despite the Supreme Court ruling in April that the government must 'facilitate' the return of Abrego Garcia to the U.S. so he could receive due process, he was not flown back until June.
In recent weeks, masked federal agents have raided car washes and other businesses in Southern California, even stationing themselves outside Dodger Stadium. (The team denied Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entry to the stadium itself.) In one incident, according to the Los Angeles Times, a man stopped his unmarked car in the middle of an intersection, took out his pistol, and aimed it at a group of pedestrians. He did not hurt anyone, eventually getting back into the car and driving off with red and blue emergency lights flashing. After reviewing surveillance footage, Pasadena police Chief Gene Harris told the newspaper his department concluded the man was in fact an ICE agent.
'They show up without uniforms. They show up completely masked. They refuse to give ID,' Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said during a press conference. 'Who are these people? And frankly, the vests that they have on look like they ordered them from Amazon. Are they bounty hunters? Are they vigilantes? If they're federal officials, why is it that they do not identify themselves?'
Similar scenes have been playing out in other parts of the country in recent months. Back in March, Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested by federal agents dressed in plainclothes and face masks and forced into an unmarked van. In Chicago earlier this month, masked ICE agents raided a building where an immigrant supervision program operates. At least 10 people were taken away in vans, with no clear understanding of why they were detained. 'We don't know who is arresting our brothers and sisters, because they are hiding behind masks,' Michael Rodriguez, a city alderman, told CBS News. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who himself was arrested last week, witnessed immigrants getting arrested at a Manhattan immigration court 'by the same non-uniformed, masked ICE agents who gave no reason for their removal, ripped them out of the arms of escorts in a proceeding that bears no resemblance to justice,' he told CBS News.
California state Sen. Scott Wiener compared federal agents' tactics to 'Nazi-level thuggery,' and has introduced legislation that would ban local, state, and federal law enforcement from covering their faces when interacting with the public—with some exceptions. Violations would amount to a misdemeanor charge.
ICE acting director Todd Lyons defended the agency's use of masks, arguing it protects agents from people who 'don't like what immigration enforcement is.' He also blamed sanctuary jurisdictions, where local authorities do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, suggesting masks would not be necessary if they 'would change their policy.'