Tag Archives: Supreme Court

Straight Arrow News: DOJ whistleblower says Trump appointee ordered defiance of courts

Posted on by
Reply

“They’re putting attorneys who have dedicated themselves to public service in the impossible position of fealty to the President or fealty to the Constitution – candor to the courts or keeping your head low and lying if asked to do so,” Reuveni told The New Yorker. “That is not what the Department of Justice that I worked in was about. That’s not why I went to the Department of Justice and stayed there for fifteen years.” 

Shortly after three planes filled with alleged Tren de Aragua gang members took off for an El Salvador supermax prison in March, a judge issued a verbal order with a simple instruction to government lawyers:  turn the planes around. The planes, however, continued to El Salvador. 

Now, a whistleblower says a top Department of Justice (DOJ) official authorized disregarding the judge’s order, telling his staff they might have to tell the courts “f- you” in immigration cases.

The official was Principal Associate Attorney General Emil Bove, whom President Donald Trump nominated to be a federal judge. Leaked emails and texts from whistleblower and former DOJ lawyer Erez Reuveni, released during the week of July 7, came days before a Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Bove’s nomination to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If the committee approves, Bove’s nomination will advance to the full Senate.

At Bove’s direction, “the Department of Justice is thumbing its nose at the courts, and putting Justice Department attorneys in an impossible position where they have to choose between loyalty to the agenda of the president and their duty to the court,” Reuveni told The New York Times.

Bove is perceived by some as a controversial choice for the lifetime position. He served on Trump’s defense team in the state and federal indictments filed after Trump’s first term in the White House.

In 2024, after Trump appointed him acting deputy attorney general, Bove ignited controversy over his firing of federal prosecutors involved in cases involving the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol and over his role in dismissing corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Early this year, the federal government was using an arcane 18th-century wartime law – the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – to remove the alleged gang members from the United States without court hearings. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia ruled the removals violated the men’s right to due process, setting up the conflict with the DOJ.

The leaker’s emails and texts suggest Bove advised DOJ attorneys that it was okay to deplane the prisoners in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. 

The messages also cite Bove’s instruction for lawyers to consider saying “f- you” to the courts.

 When Reuveni asked DOJ and Department of Homeland Security officials if they would honor the judge’s order to stop the planes to El Salvador, he received vague responses or none at all.

While the email and text correspondence allude to Bove’s instruction, none of the messages appear to have come directly from Bove himself. The official whistleblower complaint was filed on June 24.

Bove denies giving that instruction. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month, Bove said he “never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order.”

The leak prompted outrage from both sides of the political spectrum. Some say deporting people without trial to a supermax prison in El Salvador violates due process rights and a  DOJ lawyer telling other lawyers to ignore a court order should put him in contempt of court. 

However, Attorney General Pam Bondi – who served as one of Trump’s defense attorneys during his first Senate impeachment trial in 2020 – responded on X, saying there was no court order to defy. 

“As Mr. Bove testified and as the Department has made clear, there was no court order to defy, as we successfully argued to the DC Circuit when seeking a stay, when they stayed Judge Boasberg’s lawless order. And no one was ever asked to defy a court order,” the attorney general wrote Thursday, July 10, when the emails and texts were released. 

Bondi was referring to the DOJ’s immediate emergency appeal to the D.C. Circuit of Appeals requesting a stay of Boasberg’s temporary restraining order. The DOJ did not turn the planes around, arguing that a verbal order by the lower court is not binding and that the planes had already left U.S. airspace.

On March 26, the DOJ lost its appeal, with the D.C. Circuit voting 2-1 to uphold Boasberg’s ruling. The DOJ appealed again, this time to the Supreme Court, arguing that the lower courts had interfered with national security and overreached on executive immigration power. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the DOJ, 6-3, and lifted the lower court’s injunction on April 9.

Bondi accused the whistleblower Reuveni of spreading lies. She said on X that this is “another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts.” 

“This ‘whistleblower’ signed 3 briefs defending DOJ’s position in this matter and his subsequent revisionist account arose only after he was fired because he violated his ethical duties to the department,” Bondi wrote.

Reuveni worked at the DOJ for 15 years, mostly in the Office of Immigration and Litigation. Bondi fired Reuveni in April for failing to “zealously advocate” for the United States in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was accidentally deported to the El Salvador prison and whose return the Supreme Court eventually ordered.

Bondi and other Trump administration officials have fired many DOJ and FBI employees, saying the administration has broad constitutional power to do so. 

“They’re putting attorneys who have dedicated themselves to public service in the impossible position of fealty to the President or fealty to the Constitution – candor to the courts or keeping your head low and lying if asked to do so,” Reuveni told The New Yorker. “That is not what the Department of Justice that I worked in was about. That’s not why I went to the Department of Justice and stayed there for fifteen years.” 

DOJ whistleblower says Trump appointee ordered defiance of courts
A Trump judicial nominee told DOJ lawyers to ignore court orders to return planes carrying alleged gang members, a whistleblower claims.

https://san.com/cc/doj-whistleblower-says-trump-appointee-ordered-defiance-of-courts

Salon: “Cried every night”: ICE traumatizes a child with leukemia

Posted on by
Reply

The Trump administration is going after easy targets, including sick children, to meet its deportation quotas

As part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, a young cancer patient and his family were detained, despite adhering to every rule of the immigration process. The boy’s lawyer says the family’s experience puts to lie the Trump administration’s claims about deportation.

In May, a 6-year-old boy from Honduras who had been suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia since the age of three was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alongside his family, immediately after a court hearing on May 29. Their case was dismissed at the hearing, per instructions from Trump, who directed judges to dismiss the cases of immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years so that ICE can move to deport them. On July 2, the family was released after significant pressure from the public and media coverage of the detention.

Elora Mukherjee, an attorney who represented the boy and his family, told Salon that the boy and his 9-year-old sister “cried every night in detention.” At the same time, the government pursued an expedited removal, a process by which the government deports someone without a hearing before a judge.

“The Trump administration’s policy of detaining people at courthouses who are doing everything right, who are entirely law-abiding, who are trying to fulfill all the requirements that the US government asks of them — it violates our Constitution, it violates our federal laws. It also violates our sense of morality. Why are we targeting hundreds, if not thousands, of people, including children, who are doing everything right?” Mukherjee said.

Jeff Migliozzi, the communications director for Freedom for Immigrants, an immigrant advocacy organziation, told Salon that “The Trump administration’s aggressive quota of 3,000 daily immigration arrests — a policy pushed by hardliners in the White House like known white nationalist Stephen Miller — is terrorizing communities.”

“The administration is directing resources and personnel from every possible corner of the government to conduct a multi-agency detention and deportation campaign at unprecedented scale,” Migliozzi said.. “This destructive agenda touches every corner of American life and civil society, as more and more people, including those who have been in the US for decades and are pillars of their community, are suddenly snatched by masked agents and taken away to remote detention sites. Street operations are resource-intensive, so the administration has increasingly turned to bait-and-switch tactics to drive up the numbers. ICE is now relying more on arrests at scheduled check-ins and at courthouses. These practices underscore not only the cruelty of this administration’s policy, but of the outdated and unfair immigration system. Here you have people doing everything they can to follow the instructions given to them, and then the rug is pulled out from under them. The result is separated families and shattered lives.”

Despite living in Los Angeles, the family was kept at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas for over a month. The center had been closed under the Biden Administration, but has been reopened as part of Trump’s push to deport as many immigrants as possible.

In detention, Mukherjee said that the boy suffered from easy bruising and bone pain, both symptoms of leukemia, and missed a June 5 medical appointment related to his cancer treatment. His sister barely ate in detention, she added.

In response to a request for comment from Salon, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, “ICE does not consider a six-year-old child a ‘flight risk’ or a ‘criminal’—that is a disgusting accusation and devoid of any reality. ”

McLaughlin claimed that the family entered the United States illegally and that “Any implications that ICE would deny a child proper medical care are FALSE,” adding that “ICE ALWAYS prioritizes the health, safety, and well-being of all detainees in its care.”

“On May 29, 2025, an immigration judge in California dismissed the family’s immigration case and they were served orders of expedited removal,” McLaughlin said. “ICE took custody of the family following the judge’s decision and pending further proceedings. The child arrived at the Dilley facility on May 30, 2025, and was seen by a nurse during intake. Fortunately, the child has not undergone chemotherapy in over a year and was seen regularly by medical personnel while at the Dilley facility. During this time, the family chose to appeal their case. On July 2, the child, his mother, and his sister were released on parole.”

The Dilley detention facility has been subject to renewed scrutiny as the Trump administration has sought to terminate the Flores Settlement, a 1990s-era policy stemming from the Supreme Court case Reno v. Flores, which set basic standards for the treatment of children in detention and required the government to release children from detention without unnecessary delay.

Recent testimony about conditions at ICE facilities has raised concerns over violations of the agreement, with one girl describing situations in which adults and children were fighting over an insufficient amount of water at one facility.

“We don’t get enough water. They put out a little case of water, and everyone has to run for it,” the girl said in testimony related to conditions in immigrant detention. “An adult here even pushed my little sister out of the way to get to the water first.”

Mukherjee said that the family had followed all the rules in coming to the United States, but were still arrested by ICE. And, despite claims from the Trump administration that they’re focusing their efforts on criminals, neither the small children nor the mother had been accused of a crime. The family arrived in the United States in October, applying for asylum after they faced death threats in Honduras. The names and details of the family have not been released due to the threats they face in Honduras.

“So this particular family did everything right. They came to the U.S. border after fleeing imminent and menacing death threats in their home country of Honduras. They didn’t cross the border illegally. They waited for permission to enter the United States using a CBP one appointment. At that point, DHS paroled the family into the United States, which necessarily entailed a determination that the family did not pose a danger to the community or a flight risk,” Mukherjee said. “The family did exactly what the federal government asked them to do.”

According to Mukherjee, as soon as the family stepped out of their May 29 hearing, plain clothes ICE officers detained them, a move that she said “clearly violates both the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment.”

“When Trump was campaigning for president, and since he’s become president, and high-level officials in the Department of Homeland Security constantly say that we are targeting the ‘worst of the worst,’” Mukherjee said. “These are the people who are doing everything right.”

Their release followed a suit filed by the mother of the family, demanding the family’s immediate release. Mukherjee told Salon that the family intends to continue its legal battle to remain in the United States.

“Cried every night”: ICE detains child with leukemia – Salon.com
The Trump administration is going after easy targets, including sick children, to meet its deportation quotas

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/14/cried-every-night-ice-traumatizes-a-child-with-leukemia

Reuters: Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit

Posted on by
Reply

The U.S. Justice Department unit charged with defending against legal challenges to signature Trump administration policies – such as restricting birthright citizenship and slashing funding to Harvard University – has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff, according to a list seen by Reuters.

Sixty-nine of the roughly 110 lawyers in the Federal Programs Branch have voluntarily left the unit since President Donald Trump’s election in November or have announced plans to leave, according to the list compiled by former Justice Department lawyers and reviewed by Reuters.

The tally has not been previously reported. Using court records and LinkedIn accounts, Reuters was able to verify the departure of all but four names on the list. 

Reuters spoke to four former lawyers in the unit and three other people familiar with the departures who said some staffers had grown demoralized and exhausted defending an onslaught of lawsuits against Trump’s administration.

“Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system,” said one lawyer who left the unit during Trump’s second term. “How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?”

Critics have accused the Trump administration of flouting the law in its aggressive use of executive power, including by retaliating against perceived enemies and dismantling agencies created by Congress.

The Trump administration has broadly defended its actions as within the legal bounds of presidential power and has won several early victories at the Supreme Court. A White House spokesperson told Reuters that Trump’s actions were legal, and declined to comment on the departures.

“Any sanctimonious career bureaucrat expressing faux outrage over the President’s policies while sitting idly by during the rank weaponization by the previous administration has no grounds to stand on,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement. 

The seven lawyers who spoke with Reuters cited a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable among the key reasons for the wave of departures. 

Three of them said some career lawyers feared they would be pressured to misrepresent facts or legal issues in court, a violation of ethics rules that could lead to professional sanctions.

All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal dynamics and avoid retaliation. 

A Justice Department spokesperson said lawyers in the unit are fighting an “unprecedented number of lawsuits” against Trump’s agenda.

“The Department has defeated many of these lawsuits all the way up to the Supreme Court and will continue to defend the President’s agenda to keep Americans safe,” the spokesperson said. The Justice Department did not comment on the departures of career lawyers or morale in the section.

Some turnover in the Federal Programs Branch is common between presidential administrations, but the seven sources described the number of people quitting as highly unusual. 

Reuters was unable to find comparative figures for previous administrations. However, two former attorneys in the unit and two others familiar with its work said the scale of departures is far greater than during Trump’s first term and Joe Biden’s administration.

Heading for the Exit

The exits include at least 10 of the section’s 23 supervisors, experienced litigators who in many cases served across presidential administrations, according to two of the lawyers.

A spokesperson said the Justice Department is hiring to keep pace with staffing levels during the Biden Administration. They did not provide further details.

In its broad overhaul of the Justice Department, the Trump administration has fired or sidelined dozens of lawyers who specialize in prosecuting national security and corruption cases and publicly encouraged departures from the Civil Rights Division. 

But the Federal Programs Branch, which defends challenges to White House and federal agency policies in federal trial courts, remains critical to its agenda. 

The unit is fighting to sustain actions of the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency formerly overseen by Elon Musk; Trump’s order restricting birthright citizenship and his attempt to freeze $2.5 billion in funding to Harvard University.

“We’ve never had an administration pushing the legal envelope so quickly, so aggressively and across such a broad range of government policies and programs,” said Peter Keisler, who led the Justice Department’s Civil Division under Republican President George W. Bush.

“The demands are intensifying at the same time that the ranks of lawyers there to defend these cases are dramatically thinning.”

The departures have left the Justice Department scrambling to fill vacancies. More than a dozen lawyers have been temporarily reassigned to the section from other parts of the DOJ and it has been exempted from the federal government hiring freeze, according to two former lawyers in the unit.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not comment on the personnel moves.

Justice Department leadership has also brought in about 15 political appointees to help defend civil cases, an unusually high number. 

The new attorneys, many of whom have a record defending conservative causes, have been more comfortable pressing legal boundaries, according to two former lawyers in the unit. 

“They have to be willing to advocate on behalf of their clients and not fear the political fallout,” said Mike Davis, the head of the Article III Project, a pro-Trump legal advocacy group, referring to the role of DOJ lawyers in defending the administration’s policies.

People who have worked in the section expect the Federal Programs Branch to play an important role in the Trump administration’s attempts to capitalize on a Supreme Court ruling limiting the ability of judges to block its policies nationwide. 

Its lawyers are expected to seek to narrow prior court rulings and also defend against an anticipated rise in class action lawsuits challenging government policies. 

Lawyers in the unit are opposing two attempts by advocacy organizations to establish a nationwide class of people to challenge Trump’s order on birthright citizenship. A judge granted one request on Thursday.

Facing Pressure

Four former Justice Department lawyers told Reuters some attorneys in the Federal Programs Branch left over policy differences with Trump, but many had served in the first Trump administration and viewed their role as defending the government regardless of the party in power. 

The four lawyers who left said they feared Trump administration policies to dismantle certain federal agencies and claw back funding appeared to violate the U.S. Constitution or were enacted without following processes that were more defensible in court.

Government lawyers often walked into court with little information from the White House and federal agencies about the actions they were defending, the four lawyers said.

The White House and DOJ did not comment when asked about communications on cases.

Attorney General Pam Bondi in February threatened disciplinary action against government lawyers who did not vigorously advocate for Trump’s agenda. The memo to Justice Department employees warned career lawyers they could not “substitute personal political views or judgments for those that prevailed in the election.”

Four of the lawyers Reuters spoke with said there was a widespread concern that attorneys would be forced to make arguments that could violate attorney ethics rules, or refuse assignments and risk being fired. 

Those fears grew when Justice Department leadership fired a former supervisor in the Office of Immigration Litigation, a separate Civil Division unit, accusing him of failing to forcefully defend the administration’s position in the case of Kilmar Abrego, the man wrongly deported to El Salvador.

The supervisor, Erez Reuveni, filed a whistleblower complaint, made public last month, alleging he faced pressure from administration officials to make unsupported legal arguments and adopt strained interpretations of rulings in three immigration cases.

Justice Department officials have publicly disputed the claims, casting him as disgruntled. A senior official, Emil Bove, told a Senate panel that he never advised defying courts.

Career lawyers were also uncomfortable defending Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms, according to two former Justice Department lawyers and a third person familiar with the matter.

A longtime ally of Bondi who defended all four law firm cases argued they were a lawful exercise of presidential power. Judges ultimately struck down all four orders as violating the Constitution. The Trump administration has indicated it will appeal at least one case.

Not everybody wants to continue hanging out with a bunch of losers!

Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit
Seven lawyers who spoke with Reuters cited a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable among the key reasons for the wave of departures.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/two-thirds-doj-unit-defending-trump-policies-court-have-quit-2025-07-14

Newsweek: Pam Bondi’s DOJ to make Ghislaine Maxwell decision after Epstein backlash

Posted on by
Reply

Pam Bondi’s leadership of the Department of Justice may come under further Jeffrey Epstein-related scrutiny over an appeal by Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

The British socialite, and former friend of Prince Andrew, was sentenced to 20 years in jail in June 2022 for her role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, but has appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Trump administration’s response to that case is due July 14 at a particularly pressured time for Bondi, who as attorney general leads the DOJ.

Why It Matters

Bondi has facing severe criticism from within President Donald Trump‘s MAGA base after a report by the DOJ and FBI last week stated there was no Epstein client list and no evidence the New York financier blackmailed prominent public figures.

This has sparked accusations of a cover-up as Bondi appeared to suggest in February the alleged document was sitting on her desk. The White House later sought to clarify that she was referring to Epstein files more generally.

Newsweek has contacted the DOJ for comment by email out of office hours.

What to Know

Epstein is thought to have abused hundreds of girls and was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges when he died in his jail cell in 2019.

The case has long featured allegations that he forced his victims to have sex with his powerful friends, but none have ever been charged. Bill Clinton and Donald Trump have been linked to Epstein but both men, and Prince Andrew, strenuously deny knowledge of his crimes.

Trump administration figures suggested new details and even new cases would emerge after a review ordered by the President into the Epstein files this year.

However, a memo by the DOJ and FBI last week indicated there would be no new cases and stated there was no evidence of a blackmail plot by Epstein.

“This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list.’ There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions,” said the memo.

“We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

This sparked furious responses from MAGA commentators and tears from alt-right radio host Alex Jones, exerting extra pressure on the DOJ, run by Bondi as attorney general, over how to handle Ghislaine Maxwell’s appeal following her criminal conviction for sex trafficking.

Ghislaine Maxwell’s Appeal

Maxwell’s lawyers argue she should never have been put on trial due to a plea deal between Jeffrey Epstein and Florida prosecutors in 2008.

A filing by her team, seen by Newsweek, reads: “Despite the existence of a non-prosecution agreement promising in plain language that the United States would not prosecute any co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, the United States in fact prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell as a co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein.

“Only because the United States did so in the Second Circuit and not elsewhere, her motion to dismiss the indictment was denied, her trial proceeded, and she is now serving a 20-year sentence.

“In light of the disparity in how the circuit courts interpret the enforceability of a promise made by the ‘United States,’ Maxwell’s motion to dismiss would have been granted if she had been charged in at least four other circuits (plus the Eleventh, where Epstein’s agreement was entered into).

“This inconsistency in the law by which the same promise by the United States means different things in different places should be addressed by this Court.”

D. John Sauer, Donald Trump’s pick for Solicitor General, has already twice applied to extend the deadline for the administration’s response to Maxwell’s appeal, leading to the current July 14 deadline.

A letter from Sauer to the court, seen by Newsweek, read: “The government’s response is now due, after one extension, on June 13, 2025.

“We respectfully request, under Rule 30.4 of the Rules of this Court, a further extension of time to and including July 14, 2025, within which to file the government’s response.

“This extension is necessary because the attorneys with principal responsibility for

preparation of the government’s response have been heavily engaged with the press of previously assigned matters with proximate due dates.”

What People Are Saying

Conservative media personality Megyn Kelly was among those to heap pressure on Bondi over backlash during an appearance at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit over the weekend. “It’s starting to create a real hornet’s nest within the administration and I’ve got to be honest I blame Pam Bondi. I’ll tell you why: incompetence,” she said.

“She is the reason that things are unravelling around this story right now, that virtually all the Republican Party cares about. It’s also true that [FBI Deputy Director] Dan Bongino and [FBI Director] Kash Patel had questions about Epstein before they took office before they went to the FBI,” she continued.

“But once they joined the FBI they said nothing. They kept their mouths shut about Epstein. You have not seen them, except for one joint appearace with Dan and Kash on Fox, running all over the media looking for attention on this, yes, clickbaity story.

“Who have you seen?” Kelly asked. “Pam Bondi. She has never missed an opportunity to go on television and dangle sweet nothings that might be coming your way, try to lead you to believe that she’s got it, it’s on her desk, it’s coming, ‘tomorrow you’re going to see something on Epstein.'”

Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday: “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’ They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again.”

What Happens Next

The Government will now either file its reply, which should lay out how it intends to contest the case, or seek a third extension. Either way, there should be a filing to the Supreme Court case outlining which option has been chosen.

There must be many more besides Prince Andrew who took advantage of Epstein’s many underage victims. The must ALL be exposed.

Pam Bondi’s DOJ to make Ghislaine Maxwell decision after Epstein backlash
Ghislaine Maxwell filed a Supreme Court appeal arguing she should be covered by Jeffrey Epstein’s controversial plea deal.

https://www.newsweek.com/pam-bondi-doj-ghislaine-maxwell-jeffrey-epstein-files-2098469

Reuters: ICE may deport migrants to countries other than their own with just six hours notice, memo says

Posted on by
Reply

U.S. immigration officials may deport migrants to countries other than their home nations with as little as six hours’ notice, a top Trump administration official said in a memo, offering a preview of how deportations could ramp up.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will generally wait at least 24 hours to deport someone after informing them of their removal to a so-called “third country,” according to a memo dated Wednesday, July 9, from the agency’s acting director, Todd Lyons.

ICE could remove them, however, to a so-called “third country” with as little as six hours’ notice “in exigent circumstances,” said the memo, as long as the person has been provided the chance to speak with an attorney.

The memo states that migrants could be sent to nations that have pledged not to persecute or torture them “without the need for further procedures.”

The new ICE policy suggests President Donald Trump’s administration could move quickly to send migrants to countries around the world.

The Supreme Court in June lifted a lower court’s order limiting such deportations without a screening for fear of persecution in the destination country.

Following the high court’s ruling and a subsequent order from the justices, the Trump administration sent eight migrants from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Sudan and Vietnam to South Sudan.

The administration last week pressed officials from five African nations – Liberia, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Gabon – to accept deportees from elsewhere, Reuters reported.

The Washington Post first reported the new ICE memo.

The administration argues the third country deportations help swiftly remove migrants who should not be in the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.

Advocates have criticized the deportations as dangerous and cruel, since people could be sent to countries where they could face violence, have no ties and do not speak the language.

Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for a group of migrants pursuing a class action lawsuit against such rapid third-county deportations at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said the policy “falls far short of providing the statutory and due process protections that the law requires.”

Third-country deportations have been done in the past, but the tool could be more frequently used as Trump tries to ramp up deportations to record levels.

During Trump’s 2017-2021 presidency, his administration deported small numbers of people from El Salvador and Honduras to Guatemala.

Former President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration struck a deal with Mexico to take thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, since it was difficult to deport migrants to those nations.

The new ICE memo was filed as evidence in a lawsuit over the wrongful deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.

ICE may deport migrants to countries other than their own with just six hours notice, memo says

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ice-may-deport-migrants-countries-other-than-their-own-with-just-six-hours-2025-07-13

Salon: “Cried every night”: ICE detains child with leukemia

Posted on by
Reply

As part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, a young cancer patient and his family were detained, despite adhering to every rule of the immigration process. The boy’s lawyer says the family’s experience puts to lie the Trump administration’s claims about deportation.

In May, a 6-year-old boy from Honduras who had been suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia since the age of three was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alongside his family, immediately after a court hearing on May 29. Their case was dismissed at the hearing, per instructions from Trump, who directed judges to dismiss the cases of immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years so that ICE can move to deport them. On July 2, the family was released after significant pressure from the public and media coverage of the detention.

Elora Mukherjee, an attorney who represented the boy and his family, told Salon that the boy and his 9-year-old sister “cried every night in detention.” At the same time, the government pursued an expedited removal, a process by which the government deports someone without a hearing before a judge.

“The Trump administration’s policy of detaining people at courthouses who are doing everything right, who are entirely law-abiding, who are trying to fulfill all the requirements that the US government asks of them — it violates our Constitution, it violates our federal laws. It also violates our sense of morality. Why are we targeting hundreds, if not thousands, of people, including children, who are doing everything right?” Mukherjee said.

Jeff Migliozzi, the communications director for Freedom for Immigrants, an immigrant advocacy organziation, told Salon that “The Trump administration’s aggressive quota of 3,000 daily immigration arrests — a policy pushed by hardliners in the White House like known white nationalist Stephen Miller — is terrorizing communities.”

“The administration is directing resources and personnel from every possible corner of the government to conduct a multi-agency detention and deportation campaign at unprecedented scale,” Migliozzi said.. “This destructive agenda touches every corner of American life and civil society, as more and more people, including those who have been in the US for decades and are pillars of their community, are suddenly snatched by masked agents and taken away to remote detention sites. Street operations are resource-intensive, so the administration has increasingly turned to bait-and-switch tactics to drive up the numbers. ICE is now relying more on arrests at scheduled check-ins and at courthouses. These practices underscore not only the cruelty of this administration’s policy, but of the outdated and unfair immigration system. Here you have people doing everything they can to follow the instructions given to them, and then the rug is pulled out from under them. The result is separated families and shattered lives.”

Despite living in Los Angeles, the family was kept at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas for over a month. The center had been closed under the Biden Administration, but has been reopened as part of Trump’s push to deport as many immigrants as possible.

In detention, Mukherjee said that the boy suffered from easy bruising and bone pain, both symptoms of leukemia, and missed a June 5 medical appointment related to his cancer treatment. His sister barely ate in detention, she added.

In response to a request for comment from Salon, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, “ICE does not consider a six-year-old child a ‘flight risk’ or a ‘criminal’—that is a disgusting accusation and devoid of any reality. ”

McLaughlin claimed that the family entered the United States illegally and that “Any implications that ICE would deny a child proper medical care are FALSE,” adding that “ICE ALWAYS prioritizes the health, safety, and well-being of all detainees in its care.”

Bullshit!!! It’s all about cruelty and terror!

“On May 29, 2025, an immigration judge in California dismissed the family’s immigration case and they were served orders of expedited removal,” McLaughlin said. “ICE took custody of the family following the judge’s decision and pending further proceedings. The child arrived at the Dilley facility on May 30, 2025, and was seen by a nurse during intake. Fortunately, the child has not undergone chemotherapy in over a year and was seen regularly by medical personnel while at the Dilley facility. During this time, the family chose to appeal their case. On July 2, the child, his mother, and his sister were released on parole.”

The Dilley detention facility has been subject to renewed scrutiny as the Trump administration has sought to terminate the Flores Settlement, a 1990s-era policy stemming from the Supreme Court case Reno v. Flores, which set basic standards for the treatment of children in detention and required the government to release children from detention without unnecessary delay.

Recent testimony about conditions at ICE facilities has raised concerns over violations of the agreement, with one girl describing situations in which adults and children were fighting over an insufficient amount of water at one facility.

“We don’t get enough water. They put out a little case of water, and everyone has to run for it,” the girl said in testimony related to conditions in immigrant detention. “An adult here even pushed my little sister out of the way to get to the water first.”

Mukherjee said that the family had followed all the rules in coming to the United States, but were still arrested by ICE. And, despite claims from the Trump administration that they’re focusing their efforts on criminals, neither the small children nor the mother had been accused of a crime. The family arrived in the United States in October, applying for asylum after they faced death threats in Honduras. The names and details of the family have not been released due to the threats they face in Honduras.

“So this particular family did everything right. They came to the U.S. border after fleeing imminent and menacing death threats in their home country of Honduras. They didn’t cross the border illegally. They waited for permission to enter the United States using a CBP one appointment. At that point, DHS paroled the family into the United States, which necessarily entailed a determination that the family did not pose a danger to the community or a flight risk,” Mukherjee said. “The family did exactly what the federal government asked them to do.”

According to Mukherjee, as soon as the family stepped out of their May 29 hearing, plain clothes ICE officers detained them, a move that she said “clearly violates both the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment.”

“When Trump was campaigning for president, and since he’s become president, and high-level officials in the Department of Homeland Security constantly say that we are targeting the ‘worst of the worst,’” Mukherjee said. “These are the people who are doing everything right.”

Their release followed a suit filed by the mother of the family, demanding the family’s immediate release. Mukherjee told Salon that the family intends to continue its legal battle to remain in the United States.

“Cried every night”: ICE detains child with leukemia – Salon.com
The Trump administration is going after easy targets, including sick children, to meet its deportation quotas

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/14/cried-every-night-ice-traumatizes-a-child-with-leukemia

Daily Beast: ICE Memo Says Migrants Can Be Deported to Third Countries

Posted on by
Reply

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi [Bimbo #2] Noem confirmed the new policy in an appearance on Fox News.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to deport migrants to countries where they are not citizens and do not speak the language with as little as six hours’ notice.

Deporting people to third countries where they don’t speak the language is truly inhumane.

If they are at risk of torture or persecution in their home countries, they should be eligible for asylum in the U.S. Period.

A six-hour window in which to contact your attorney and appeal is utterly absurd.

There’s more in the article (click links below) but the quote above really says it all.

ICE Memo Says Migrants Can Be Deported to Third Countries
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed the new policy in an appearance on Fox News.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-memo-says-migrants-can-be-deported-to-third-countries

New York Times: ‘Egregious.’ ‘Brazen.’ ‘Lawless. ’How 48 JudgesDescribe Trump’s Actions, In Their Own Words

Posted on by
Reply

Many Americans in positions of power, including corporate executives and members of Congress, seem too afraid of President Trump to stand up to his anti-democratic behavior. Federal judges have shown themselves to be exceptions. “Judges from across the ideological spectrum are ruling against administration policies at remarkable rates,” said Adam Bonica, a political scientist at Stanford University.

These rulings have halted Mr. Trump’s vengeful attempts to destroy law firms, forestalled some of his budget cuts and kept him from deporting additional immigrants. Yes, the Supreme Court has often been more deferential to the president. Still, it has let stand many lower-court rulings and has itself constrained Mr. Trump in some cases.

The bipartisan alarm from federal judges offers a roadmap for others to respond to Mr. Trump’s often illegal behavior. His actions deserve to be called out in plain language for what they really are. And people in positions of influence should do what they can to stand up for American values, as many judges have done.

Here, we’ve compiled quotations from judges’ recent rulings and bench comments.

…

J. Harvie Wilkinson III, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals

Appointed by Ronald Reagan

On the refusal to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador:

“This is a path of perfect lawlessness, one that courts cannot condone.”

Leonie M. Brinkema, Eastern District of Virginia

Appointed by Bill Clinton

On an ICE official’s inconsistent affidavit:

“This is a terrible, terrible affidavit. If this were before me in a criminal case and you were asking to get a warrant issued on this, I’d throw you out of my chambers.”

James E. Boasberg, District of Columbia District

Appointed by Barack Obama

On a judge’s order blocking deportations:

“In an egregious case of cherry-picking, defendants selectively quote only a fragment of the court’s response here to mischaracterize its position.”

Click on the links below to read what the other 45 judges had to say regarding King Donald’s legal prowess:

Opinion | ‘Egregious.’ ‘Brazen.’ ‘Lawless.’ How 48 Judges Describe Trump’s Actions, in Their Own Words
Dozens of judges, appointed by presidents of both parties, have stood up to the administration’s lawlessness.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/07/12/opinion/editorials/federal-judges-quotes-trump-administration.html?unlocked_article_code=1.V08.A1qs.Bu0IZMlwJ46a&smid=url-share

MSNBC: Rep. Ogles is openly calling on Pam Bondi to betray the constitution

Posted on by
Reply

Last week, Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi that called for a federal investigation to determine whether New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani — a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Uganda — should be subject to denaturalization proceedings based on eight-year-old rap lyrics that Ogles claims could constitute material support for terrorism. At a news conference Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated that the allegations, “if true, were something that should be investigated.”

And earlier in June, the Justice Department issued a memo announcing its directive to “maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings.”

The Trump administration made denaturalization a priority during the first term, creating a special Justice Department section to pursue these cases. The administration now appears positioned to expand these efforts with a policy requiring that denaturalization be pursued wherever legally possible.

As the apparent next step in the Trump administration’s mass deportation regime, this rarely used but potentially far-reaching government power is getting newfound attention. As legal scholars who study denaturalization, we believe the new Justice Department policy could significantly expand the circumstances under which naturalized Americans might lose their citizenship in ways that raise serious constitutional questions.

… the [Supreme] court held denaturalization was unconstitutional in most circumstances, leaving open only cases in which someone “illegally procured” citizenship by not meeting requirements or obtaining it through fraud or concealment of material facts. In the half-century after this decision, fewer than 150 Americans were denaturalized, mostly former war criminals who had hidden their pasts.

…

More fundamentally, we argue that aggressive denaturalization policies conflict with constitutional principles of citizenship. The framers envisioned citizens as sovereign, serving as the source of government power rather than its subjects. Allowing the government to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans for decades-old conduct creates exactly the kind of arbitrary governmental authority the Constitution was designed to prevent.

The administration’s “maximal enforcement” approach means pursuing cases beyond clear instances of fraud, potentially including any situation in which evidence might support denaturalization regardless of strength or age. This approach will inevitably result in cases involving ambiguous evidence that can be arbitrarily interpreted by the government.

While supporters of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts argue that denaturalization maintains the integrity of the naturalization system, we contend that the policy risks creating different classes of citizenship, with naturalized Americans facing ongoing vulnerability that native-born citizens never experience. This effectively creates the kind of second-class citizenship that our constitutional system forbids.

Opinion | Rep. Andy Ogles’ call to ‘denaturalize’ Zohran Mamdani conflicts with the Constitution
Aggressive denaturalization policies conflict with constitutional principles of citizenship.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-doj-denaturalization-zohran-mamdani-andy-ogles-constitution-rcna216056

Associated Press: A day outside an LA detention center shows profound impact of ICE raids on families

Posted on by
Reply

At a federal immigration building in downtown Los Angeles guarded by U.S. Marines, daughters, sons, aunts, nieces and others make their way to an underground garage and line up at a door with a buzzer at the end of a dirty, dark stairwell.

It’s here where families, some with lawyers, come to find their loved ones after they’ve been arrested by federal immigration agents.

For immigrants without legal status who are detained in this part of Southern California, their first stop is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in the basement of the federal building. Officers verify their identity and obtain their biometrics before transferring them to detention facilities. Upstairs, immigrants line up around the block for other services, including for green cards and asylum applications.

On a recent day, dozens of people arrived with medication, clothing and hope of seeing their loved one, if only briefly. After hours of waiting, many were turned away with no news, not even confirmation that their relative was inside. Some relayed reports of horrific conditions inside, including inmates who are so thirsty that they have been drinking from the toilets. ICE did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

Just two weeks ago, protesters marched around the federal complex following aggressive raids in Los Angeles that began June 6 and have not stopped. Scrawled expletives about President Donald Trump still mark the complex’s walls.

Those arrested are from a variety of countries, including Mexico, Guatemala, India, Iran, China and Laos. About a third of the county’s 10 million residents are foreign-born.

Many families learned about the arrests from videos circulating on social media showing masked officers in parking lots at Home Depots, at car washes and in front of taco stands.

Around 8 a.m., when attorney visits begin, a few lawyers buzz the basement door called “B-18” as families wait anxiously outside to hear any inkling of information.

9 a.m.

Christina Jimenez and her cousin arrive to check if her 61-year-old stepfather is inside.

Her family had prepared for the possibility of this happening to the day laborer who would wait to be hired outside a Home Depot in the LA suburb of Hawthorne. They began sharing locations when the raids intensified. They told him that if he were detained, he should stay silent and follow instructions.

Jimenez had urged him to stop working, or at least avoid certain areas as raids increased. But he was stubborn and “always hustled.”

“He could be sick and he’s still trying to make it out to work,” Jimenez said.

After learning of his arrest, she looked him up online on the ICE Detainee Locator but couldn’t find him. She tried calling ICE to no avail.

Two days later, her phone pinged with his location downtown.

“My mom’s in shock,” Jimenez said. “She goes from being very angry to crying, same with my sister.”

Jimenez says his name into the intercom – Mario Alberto Del Cid Solares. After a brief wait, she is told yes, he’s there.

She and her cousin breathe a sigh of relief — but their questions remain.

Her biggest fear is that instead of being sent to his homeland of Guatemala, he will be deported to another country, something the Supreme Court recently ruled was allowed.

9:41 a.m.

By mid-morning, Estrella Rosas and her mother have come looking for her sister, Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen. A day earlier, they saw Velez being detained after they dropped her off at her marketing job at a shoe company downtown.

“My mom told me to call 911 because someone was kidnapping her,” Rosas said.

Stuck on a one-way street, they had to circle the block. By the time they got back, she says they saw Velez in handcuffs being put into a car without license plates.

Velez’s family believes she was targeted for looking Hispanic and standing near a tamale stand.

Rosas has her sister’s passport and U.S. birth certificate, but learns she is not there. They find her next door in a federal detention center. She was accused of obstructing immigration officers, which the family denies, but is released the next day.

11:40 a.m.

About 20 people are now outside. Some have found cardboard to sit on after waiting hours.

One family comforts a woman who is crying softly in the stairwell.

Then the door opens, and a group of lawyers emerge. Families rush to ask if the attorneys could help them.

Kim Carver, a lawyer with the Trans Latino Coalition, says she planned to see her client, a transgender Honduran woman, but she was transferred to a facility in Texas at 6:30 that morning.

Carver accompanied her less than a week ago for an immigration interview and the asylum officer told her she had a credible case. Then ICE officers walked in and detained her.

“Since then, it’s been just a chase trying to find her,” she says.

12:28 p.m.

As more people arrive, the group begins sharing information. One person explains the all-important “A-number,” the registration number given to every detainee, which is needed before an attorney can help.

They exchange tips like how to add money to an account for phone calls. One woman says $20 lasted three or four calls for her.

Mayra Segura is looking for her uncle after his frozen popsicle cart was abandoned in the middle of the sidewalk in Culver City.

“They couldn’t find him in the system,” she says.

12:52 p.m.

Another lawyer, visibly frustrated, comes out the door. She’s carrying bags of clothes, snacks, Tylenol, and water that she says she wasn’t allowed to give to her client, even though he says he had been given only one water bottle over the past two days.

The line stretches outside the stairwell into the sun. A man leaves and returns with water for everyone.

Nearly an hour after family visitations are supposed to begin, people are finally allowed in.

2:12 p.m.

Still wearing hospital scrubs from work, Jasmin Camacho Picazo comes to see her husband again.

She brought a sweater because he had told her he was cold, and his back injury was aggravated from sleeping on the ground.

“He mentioned this morning (that) people were drinking from the restroom toilet water,” Picazo says.

On her phone, she shows footage of his car left on the side of the road after his arrest. The window was smashed and the keys were still in the ignition.

“I can’t stop crying,” Picazo says.

Her son keeps asking: “Is Papa going to pick me up from school?”

2:21 p.m.

More than five hours after Jimenez and her cousin arrive, they see her stepfather.

“He was sad and he’s scared,” says Jimenez afterwards. “We tried to reassure him as much as possible.”

She wrote down her phone number, which he had not memorized, so he could call her.

2:57 p.m.

More people arrive as others are let in.

Yadira Almadaz comes out crying after seeing her niece’s boyfriend for only five minutes. She says he was in the same clothes he was wearing when he was detained a week ago at an asylum appointment in the city of Tustin. He told her he’d only been given cookies and chips to eat each day.

“It breaks my heart seeing a young man cry because he’s hungry and thirsty,” she says.

3:56 p.m.

Four minutes before visitation time is supposed to end, an ICE officer opens the door and announces it’s over.

One woman snaps at him in frustration. The officer tells her he would get in trouble if he helped her past 4 p.m.

More than 20 people are still waiting in line. Some trickle out. Others linger, staring at the door in disbelief.

A day outside an LA detention center shows profound impact of ICE raids on families | The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) — At a federal immigration building in downtown Los Angeles guarded by U.S. Marines, daughters, sons, aunts, nieces and others make
A day outside an LA detention center shows profound impact of ICE raids on families