Independent: Venezuelans ‘barricaded’ doors and ‘threatened to take hostages’ in ICE detention, Trump team alleges

Administration calls on Supreme Court for permission to swiftly deport nearly 200 immigrants detained in Texas

In its latest demand to the Supreme Court to begin swiftly deporting immigrants from the United States, Donald Trump’s administration claims a group of Venezuelan men imprisoned in Texas tried to barricade themselves inside their unit, covered surveillance cameras and threatened to take hostages.

A group of 23 men the administration accused of being Tren de Aragua gang members “have proven difficult to manage,” according to a sworn statement in court documents from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official.

In an incident on April 23 that has not previously been reported, the men allegedly “refused their breakfast trays and barricaded both the front and rear entrance doors of their housing unit using bed cots” and “covered the surveillance cameras and blocked the housing unit windows.”

They “threatened to take hostages and injure facility contract staff and ICE officers” and “attempted to flood the housing unit by clogging toilets,” according to Joshua D. Johnson, acting ICE director for the Dallas office.

Can you blame them for trying to avoid an illegal deportation to a prison in a third country? They wanted to be deported (legally!) to their home country:

Another image captures a group holding up a sign that reads, in Spanish, “Help, we want to be deported. We are not terrorists.” The sign says “VZLA,” a reference to Venezuela, and suggests they are pleading with authorities to avoid their imprisonment in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, labeled by human rights groups as a “tropical gulag” and concentration camp.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-administration-supreme-court-alien-enemies-act-b2750299.html

Independent: Trump endorses idea that Supreme Court ruling blocking his deportations under Alien Enemies Act is ‘illegal’

President reposted a comment claiming the Supreme Court was heading down the wrong path by blocking some of Trump’s actions

President Donald Trump endorsed the idea that the United States Supreme Court had placed an “illegal injunction” on him by temporarily blocking his administration’s ability to deport Venezuelans, accused of being gang members, without due process, while litigation on the matter plays out in lower courts.

On Truth Social on Saturday, Trump reposted two posts made by attorney Mike Davis, a close Trump ally and the founder of the Article III project, calling the court’s recent decision “illegal” and claiming it was “heading down a perilous path” by not allowing Trump to continue a constitutionally questionable action.

“The Supreme Court still has an illegal injunction on the President of the United States, preventing him from commanding military operations to expel these foreign terrorists,” Davis wrote.

Do these fools have any understanding as to why the Supreme Court exists?

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-supreme-court-deportation-truth-social-b2753057.html

USA Today: ‘Spaghetti against the wall?’ Trump tests legal strategies as judges block his policies

The Trump administration is fighting to kill 40 court orders blocking its new policies.

  • Solicitor General John Sauer urged the Supreme Court to halt nationwide injunctions against Trump policies but said if class-action lawsuits took their place, he would oppose them too.
  • Legal experts said if the Supreme Court abolishes nationwide injunctions, Trump could cut his losses by limiting the reach of court rulings that go against him.

As the Trump administration fights to kill 40 court orders blocking some of his most controversial or aggressive new policies, legal experts say the government’s strategy is to break the cases apart, into individual disputes, to delay an eventual reckoning at the Supreme Court.

One called President Donald Trump’s legal strategy a “shell game.” Another said government lawyers were “throwing spaghetti against the wall” to see what sticks.

“Their bottom line is that they don’t think these cases should be in court in the first place,” said Luke McCloud, a lawyer at Williams and Connolly who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. “They are looking for a procedural mechanism that will make it the most challenging to bring these sorts of cases.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/17/trump-legal-strategies-federal-judges-injunctions/83673013007

Raw Story: Trump’s DOJ screwed up by rushing the ‘worst possible case’ to the Supreme Court: expert

A decision to send Solicitor General John Sauer to defend an executive order signed by Donald Trump before the Supreme Court this week was a massive mistake that could haunt the president going forward.

That is the opinion of conservative lawyer George Conway who appeared on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” Saturday morning where he was asked to weigh in by co-hosts Jonathan Capehart, Eugene Daniels and fill-in host María Teresa Kumar.

Discussing Trump’s attempts to undermine birthright citizenship enshrined by the 14th Amendment, Conway asserted the DOJ used the wrong case at the wrong time.

“This is the worst possible case and that was Justice [Elena] Kagan, former Solicitor General Kagan’s point,” he began. “To bring up to the Supreme Court on the procedural technical issue of when you can issue a nationwide injunction.”

“You want to go up on a case where you’re going to you have a chance of winning, where the court thinks that, ultimately, your position is right,” he stated.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-supreme-court-2672034883

Vox.com: The first federal court hearing on Trump’s tariffs did not go so well for Trump

A federal court held the very first hearing on President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging, so-called Liberation Day tariffs on Tuesday, offering the earliest window into whether those tariffs — and potentially all of the shifting tariffs Trump has imposed since he retook office — will be struck down. The case is V.O.S. Selections v. Trump.

It is unclear how the three-judge panel that heard the case will rule, but it appears somewhat more likely than not that they will rule that the tariffs are unlawful. All three of the judges, who sit on the US Court of International Trade, appeared troubled by the Trump administration’s claim that the judiciary may not review the legality of the tariffs at all. But Jeffrey Schwab, the lawyer representing several small businesses challenging the tariffs, also faced an array of skeptical questions.

https://www.vox.com/economy/412966/supreme-court-tariffs-donald-trump-trade-vos-selections