The Trump Administration Is Lawless. Judges Are Adapting.

A Maryland judge uses SCOTUS roadmap to issue preemptive relief.

Last week Judge George Russell III, chief of the US District Court in Maryland pumped the brakes on the Trump administration’s deportation spree. Specifically, he ordered the government wait at least 48 hours after a habeas petition is filed to deport an immigrant detainee. But unlike every other order we’ve seen in the battle over immigration, this one didn’t come in the context of a particular lawsuit. Here the judge acted on behalf of the court itself, issuing a standing order — essentially a rule for the district — protecting immigrants in the state from “improper and imminent removal from the United States.”

While technically an administrative rule, the order has the practical effect of issuing class-like relief to all immigrant detainees in Maryland. Federal courts, which are normally highly deferential to the executive branch, are now preemptively seeking to head off the government, which is literally racing to shove people on to planes before a judge can rule on pending motions to stop them. It’s a stunning indictment of both the DHS and the Justice Department, taking it as a given that the government will violate the Constitution’s mandate of due process in its desperate quest to expel as many human beings as fast as possible.

It All Goes Back To J.G.G.

Judge Russell’s order is rooted in the litigation arising from the three deportation flights to CECOT prison in El Salvador that left Harlingen, Texas on March 15.

The ACLU filed suit early that morning, but before Judge Boasberg could rule, the first flight had already departed. The second two flights took off after he ordered the government to turn the plane around and not deport any other class members. Later it emerged that at least two Maryland men on those flights had been illegally deported: Kilmar Abrego Garcia had a court order barring his removal to his native country; And a 20-year-old named “Cristian” was deported despite being protected from removal by a legal settlement covering children brought here as minors who later asserted asylum claims.