Tag Archives: Alien Enemies Act

Associated Press: The 911 presidency: Trump flexes emergency powers in his second term

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Despite insisting that the United States is rebounding from calamity under his watch, President Donald Trump is harnessing emergency powers unlike any of his predecessors.

Whether it’s leveling punishing tariffs, deploying troops to the border or sidelining environmental regulations, Trump has relied on rules and laws intended only for use in extraordinary circumstances like war and invasion.

An analysis by The Associated Press shows that 30 of Trump’s 150 executive orders have cited some kind of emergency power or authority, a rate that far outpaces his recent predecessors.

The result is a redefinition of how presidents can wield power. Instead of responding to an unforeseen crisis, Trump is using emergency powers to supplant Congress’ authority and advance his agenda.

“What’s notable about Trump is the enormous scale and extent, which is greater than under any modern president,” said Ilya Somin, who is representing five U.S. businesses who sued the administration, claiming they were harmed by Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs.

The 911 presidency: Trump flexes emergency powers in his second term
Call it the 911 presidency. Despite insisting that the United States has rebounded from calamity under his watch, President Donald Trump is harnessing emergency powers unlike any of his predecessors.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-emergency-powers-tariffs-immigration-5cbe386d8f2cc4a374a5d005e618d76a

Talking Points Memo: Trump Stonewalls Federal Judges In New Round Of Brazen Defiance

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A Constitutional Clash In Three Acts

In three closely watched anti-immigration cases, the Trump administration continued its slo-mo constitutional defiance of the judicial branch …

Act I: Non-Responsiveness

Act II: Delay Shenanigans

Act III: Misdirection And Mischaracterization

Read the article for the details:

Trump Stonewalls Federal Judges In New Round Of Brazen Defiance
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This…

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/trump-stonewalls-federal-judges-in-new-round-of-brazen-defiance

Wired: The Trump Administration Wants to Create an ‘Office of Remigration’

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“Remigration”—a far-right European plan to expel minorities and immigrants from Western nations—may soon have a dedicated office following a Trump administration reorganization of the State Department.

As part of a sweeping reorganization of the State Department, the Trump administration is creating an Office of Remigration. Remigration is an immigration policy embraced by extremists that calls for the removal of all migrants—including “non-assimilated” citizens—with the goal of creating white ethnostates in Western countries.

The details of the plan are contained in a 136-page notification document sent by the State Department to six Congressional commitees—including the House Foreign Affairs and Appropriations Committees and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—for approval by July 1, according to a copy reviewed by WIRED.

“The Office of Remigration will serve as the [Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration]’s hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking,” the document reads. “It will provide a policy platform for interagency coordination with DHS and other agencies on removals/repatriations, and “for intra-agency policy work to advance the President’s immigration agenda.”

The notification says that the Office of Remigration “will also actively facilitate the voluntary return of migrants to their country of origin or legal status,” which is a key aim of remigration ideology.

There are three phases to “remigration”:

On [Martin Sellner’s] site, he lays out a three-phase plan to implement remigration. The first phase, dubbed the “Immediate Stabilization of Asylum Chaos,” has striking similarities to Trump’s current immigration policies.

…

The second phase of Sellner’s plan, following the initial removal of undocumented immigrants, includes the removal of “migrants who entered the country legally and have a residence/work permit, or temporary visa, but are an economical, criminal or cultural burden.”

The final phase targets citizens who are seen as “non assimilated,”and it involves passing laws to “target parallel societies with economic and cultural pressure” and entice citizens to migrate abroad with the use of loans, payments, and other assistance. The plan, Sellner claims, will allow “the wounds of multiculturalism to heal.”

This is like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, all laid out in writing and scarcely anybody is paying attention.

The Trump Administration Wants to Create an ‘Office of Remigration’ to Kick Immigrants Out of the Country
“Remigration”—a far-right European plan to expel minorities and immigrants from Western nations—may soon have a dedicated office following a Trump administration reorganization of the State Department.

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-office-remigration-state-department-europe-far-right

Talking Points Memo: New Details Emerge On Trump Administration’s Defiance Of The Courts

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Stone Cold Stonewalling

New details about the extent of the Trump administration’s stonewalling in the case of the mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia were revealed in a court filing Thursday. After six weeks of what was originally supposed to be two weeks of expedited discovery, the government has provided virtually no meaningful discovery responses, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers report.

Normal discovery disputes would not usually be newsworthy, but this comes in the context of a contempt of court inquiry. The administration’s defiance on discovery and the associated gamesmanship cut against its already-dubious claims that it has complied with the order by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return – an order endorsed and echoed by the Supreme Court.

…

After the Trump administration late Wednesday asked for an extension of the May 30 deadline by which all discovery is to be completed, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed a blistering response demonstrating how little discovery the government has produced so far. It was already clear from public filings that the government had offered witnesses for deposition who had little or no personal knowledge of the facts of the case, in contravention of the judge’s order. The precise details of that defiance are unclear because many filings remain under seal.

The new details show how desultory the government’s document production has been, too. As of two weeks ago, the government had only produced 34 actual documents. In the subsequent two weeks it was given in which to produce rolling discovery, it coughed up a total of one additional partial document, according to Abrego Garcia’s filing.

New Details Emerge On Trump Administration’s Defiance Of The Courts
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This…

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/new-details-emerge-on-trump-administrations-defiance-of-courts

Alternet: Busted: Major investigation catches Trump administration in a massive lie

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The Trump administration knew that the vast majority of the 238 Venezuelan immigrants it sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador in mid-March had not been convicted of crimes in the United States before it labeled them as terrorists and deported them, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security data that has not been previously reported.’

President Donald Trump and his aides have branded the Venezuelans as “rapists,” “savages,” “monsters” and “the worst of the worst.” When multiple news organizations disputed those assertions with reporting that showed many of the deportees did not have criminal records, the administration doubled down. It said that its assessment of the deportees was based on a thorough vetting process that included looking at crimes committed both inside and outside the United States. But the government’s own data, which was obtained by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and a team of journalists from Venezuela, showed that officials knew that only 32 of the deportees had been convicted of U.S. crimes and that most were nonviolent offenses, such as retail theft or traffic violations.

The data indicates that the government knew that only six of the immigrants were convicted of violent crimes: four for assault, one for kidnapping and one for a weapons offense. And it shows that officials were aware that more than half, or 130, of the deportees were not labeled as having any criminal convictions or pending charges; they were labeled as only having violated immigration laws.

As for foreign offenses, our own review of court and police records from around the United States and in Latin American countries where the deportees had lived found evidence of arrests or convictions for 20 of the 238 men. Of those, 11 involved violent crimes such as armed robbery, assault or murder, including one man who the Chilean government had asked the U.S. to extradite to face kidnapping and drug charges there. Another four had been accused of illegal gun possession.

Busted: Major investigation catches Trump administration in a massive lie

https://www.alternet.org/venezuelan-deportees

Reason: ‘Banal Horror’: Asylum Case Deals Trump Yet Another Loss on Due Process

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President Trump is entitled to try to execute his immigration policy. He is not entitled, however, to violate the Constitution.

The Trump administration this week formally agreed to comply with a ruling that ordered it to facilitate the return of a migrant who was unlawfully deported—in what was another loss for the government as it attempts to subvert basic due process rights in immigration proceedings.

The migrant—named in court documents as O.C.G., who has no criminal history—arrived in the U.S. in May 2024 and sought asylum. An officer agreed he had a credible fear of persecution and torture if returned to Guatemala; a judge assented as well and granted him withholding of removal to that country.

During his proceedings, when he asked if he might be sent to Mexico, a judge replied: “We cannot send you back to Mexico, sir, because you’re a native of Guatemala.” Deportations to a nonnative country legally require, at a minimum, additional steps in the process.

That was particularly relevant to O.C.G.’s case, because, as he testified in court, he claims to have been held for ransom and raped while passing through Mexico, securing release only after a family member paid the sum. Yet two days after his withholding of removal was granted, the government unlawfully deported him—without a chance to contest it—to Mexico, after which he returned to Guatemala, where his attorneys say he lives in hiding and in fear of serious harm.

‘Banal horror’: Asylum case deals Trump yet another loss on due process
The Trump administration this week formally agreed to comply with a ruling that ordered it to facilitate the return of a migrant who was unlawfully

https://reason.com/2025/05/29/banal-horror-asylum-case-deals-trump-yet-another-loss-on-due-process

Latin Times: Venezuelans Deported To El Salvador Are Getting Cases Dismissed And Advocates Say It’s To ‘Complete Their Disappearance’

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At least 14 cases have reportedly taken place over the past weeks

Venezuelans deported to El Salvador are increasingly seeing their cases dismissed, a development advocates claim is a way to complete their “disappearance” from the U.S. legal system and further complicate their return from imprisonment in the Central American country.

NBC News reported that at least 14 asylum cases have been dismissed over the past weeks. “It seems the government’s intention in dismissing these cases across the country is to complete the disappearance of people to El Salvador, to end their legal proceedings, and to act as though they weren’t here seeking asylum in the first place,” Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, told the outlet. She is representing Andry Hernandez Romero, who was involved in such a case before being sent to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador.

Venezuelans Deported To El Salvador Are Getting Cases Dismissed And Advocates Say It’s To ‘Complete Their Disappearance’
At least 14 migrants deported to El Salvador have seen their asylum cases dismissed in the U.S. Advocates say the goal is completing their “disappearance” of the country’s legal system

https://www.latintimes.com/venezuelans-deported-el-salvador-are-getting-cases-dismissed-advocates-say-its-complete-their-583953

Talking Points Memo: The ‘Invasion’ Invention: The Far Right’s Long Legal Battle to Make Immigrants the Enemy

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The Trump administration is using the claim that immigrants have “invaded” the country to justify possibly suspending habeas corpus, part of the constitutional right to due process. A faction of the far right has been building this case for years.

When top Trump adviser Stephen Miller threatened on May 9 that the administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus in response to an “invasion” from undocumented immigrants, he was operating on a fringe legal theory that a right-wing faction has been working to legitimize for more than a decade.

…

Hard-liners have referred to immigrants as “invaders” as long as the U.S. has had immigration. By 2022, invasion rhetoric, which had previously been relegated to white nationalist circles, had become such a staple of Republican campaign ads that most of the public agreed an invasion of the U.S. via the southern border was underway.

Now, however, the claim that the U.S. is under invasion has become the legal linchpin of President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-immigrant campaign.

The claim is Trump’s central justification for invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport roughly 140 Venezuelans to CECOT, the Salvadoran megaprison, without due process. (The administration cited different legal authority for the remaining deportees.) The Trump administration contends they are members of a gang, Tren de Aragua, that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is directing to infiltrate and operate in the United States. Lawyers and families of many of the deportees have presented evidence the prisoners are not even members of Tren de Aragua.

The contention is also the throughline of Trump’s day one executive order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” That document calls for the expansion of immigration removal proceedings without court hearings and for legal attacks against sanctuary jurisdictions, places that refuse to commit local resources to immigration enforcement.

So far, no court has bought the idea that the U.S. is truly under invasion….

And therein lies the problem: The Trump regime is off pursuing an unconstitutional tangent to solve a problem that is improperly framed as an “invasion”.

It’s a long well-researched article. Please click on the link below and read the entire article.

The ‘Invasion’ Invention: The Far Right’s Long Legal Battle to Make Immigrants the Enemy
This article first appeared at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign…

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the-invasion-invention-the-far-rights-long-legal-battle-to-make-immigrants-the-enemy

Talking Points Memo: More Than 50 Men Entered The US Legally Only To Later Be Sent To CECOT, Report Finds

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More than two months after the Trump administration flew more than 200 people to a detention camp in El Salvador, there’s still a lot that remains unclear.

We still don’t know who, exactly, the government sent there. We don’t know how many people were aboard each plane that went from Texas to El Salvador on March 15; we don’t know who was removed under the wartime Alien Enemies Act, and who was removed under more standard immigration authorities. The question of whether non-citizens that the U.S. government is paying El Salvador to hold are entitled to habeas corpus protections is also, somewhat ominously, unanswered.

It’s shocking given the lawlessness of the operation: the Trump administration sought to shield these removals from judicial scrutiny from the start, and, per the finding of one federal judge, sought to delay a court hearing until the airplanes could depart for El Salvador.

A report published this week by the Cato Institute adds another egregious fact to this story: many of those sent to El Salvador entered the United States legally.

The researchers behind the study attempted to learn as much as they could about a list of 238 men rendered to CECOT, the El Salvador prison, on March 15, obtained and reported by CBS News. They found that at least 50 of the more than 200 men sent to El Salvador complied with U.S. immigration law as they entered the country.

Their resulting removal and indefinite confinement in El Salvador has been a betrayal, David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute and the author of the study, told TPM.

So much for due process and the Bill of Rights in Trump’s Amerika!

More Than 50 Men Entered The US Legally Only To Later Be Sent To CECOT, Report Finds
More than two months after the Trump administration flew more than 200…

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/more-than-50-men-entered-the-us-legally-only-to-later-be-sent-to-cecot-report-finds

The Hill: Vance: Courts trying to ‘literally overturn the will of the American people’

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Vice-President J.D. [“Dunce”] Vance waded into the tug-of-war between the courts and executive branch in an interview published earlier this week, warning that the courts should pull back or risk stepping on the will of the American people.

How simple can I make this, Bubba?

The Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the courts exist to protect the rights and due process of our people from mob rule. Our rights are inalienable. The will of the people is irrelevant in this context.

How the hell did you ever pass high school civics, let alone earn a law degree? Your apparent stupidity is mindboggling.

Vance: Courts trying to ‘literally overturn the will of the American people’

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5315703-vance-judiciary-immigration-voters