Tonight in Your Rights: Judge Boasberg turns Trump's words against him
Kristi Noem's comments didn't help Trump, either. Also: A targeted Tufts student wins her appeal — and is Libya the next El Salvador?
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The Supreme Court may have overturned his temporary restraining orders, but it didn’t take away his ability to make the Trump administration sweat.
During a hearing on Wednesday afternoon, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg held the Department of Justice’s feet to the fire when another habeas case challenging Donald Trump’s Alien Enemies Act (AEA) proclamation returned to his courtroom.
Boasberg quoted Trump saying that he “could” have Kilmar Abrego Garcia freed in order to undermine the government’s position that they have no control over the more than 200 men spirited away to a dangerous prison in El Salvador.
"Is the President not telling the truth, or could he secure the release of Mr. Abrego-Garcia?" Boasberg asked.
Possible Action Item: Volunteer
The Trump admin reportedly targeted D.C.-area restaurants for immigration raids. Advocacy groups offer various ways to protect refugees, in the nation’s capitol and beyond.
Unlike three other cases challenging Trump’s use of the wartime statute, the case before Boasberg doesn’t involve immigrants detained in his district. There are no immigration detention centers in Washington, D.C.
Instead, the question before Boasberg is whether the Trump administration has “constructive custody” over the hundreds of men sent to El Salvador’s CECOT prison.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s description of CECOT as “one of the tools in our toolkit” suggests the government does.
"Is she wrong about that?" Boasberg asked.
Justice Department lawyer Abhishek Kambli responded that public statements sometimes lack nuance.
"Is that another way of saying these statements just aren’t true?" Boasberg deadpanned.
"No, your honor,” Kambli replied. “I’m not saying that at all."
The case heard today returned to Boasberg after the Supreme Court overturned his temporary restraining orders blocking certain flights to El Salvador. A narrow majority of the justices ruled on technical grounds, finding that the proper vehicle to challenge the Trump administration’s actions was through habeas corpus, not the Adminstrative Procedures Act.
Since that time, lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union have been filing habeas cases across the country at a furious pace — and winning.
So far, three district court judges have found Trump’s use of the wartime statute to end-run due process for immigrants to be unlawful, finding that there is no “declared war,” “invasion” or “predatory incursion” to justify it. Boasberg is considering whether to follow suit, and if so, whether he will have jurisdiction over a class currently locked up in CECOT.
Today’s hearing did not address Boasberg’s finding of probable cause that Trump officials may have engaged in criminal contempt by violating his prior orders. He ended the hearing without a ruling.
Trump must send detained Tufts student to Vermont
A New York-based federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to send detained Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk from Louisiana to Vermont, unanimously finding that the Trump administration’s “extraordinary” jurisdictional strategy would strip all immigrants of their rights.
U.S. Circuit Judges Barrington Parker, Susan Carney, and Alison Nathan all signed the 43-page order.
“The government cites no statute or case law for this extraordinary proposition, the practical effect of which would be that for some unspecified period of time after detention—seemingly however long the government chooses to take in transporting a detainee between states or between facilities—a detainee would be unable to file a habeas petition at all, anywhere,” they wrote. “Such a rule finds no support in the law and is contrary to longstanding tradition.”
Öztürk, like fellow students Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mawdawi, had been living in the United States legally when immigration authorities sent her to Jena, La. She had studied here on a student visa, and she says the Trump administration targeted her for co-authoring an op-ed in a student newspaper about the university’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
As the ruling recounts, “six heavily armed, plainclothes officers, some masked, arrested Öztürk without warning on the street near her residence and drove her away in an unmarked vehicle, crossing state lines and transporting her first to New Hampshire, then to Vermont, and the next day, flying her to a correctional facility in Basile, Louisiana, where she remains in custody.”
In multiple cases, the Trump administration cited the quick transfer of student activists to the Bayou State in order to deprive courts closer to their homes of jurisdiction. That strategy has been failing.
First El Salvador, Now Libya?
The Trump administration appears to be running the board to sign up human rights abusers as partners in immigration enforcement — and a federal judge took immediate action to prevent it.
On Wednesday, lawyers asked a federal judge for an emergency order blocking hundreds of immigrants "from being removed to Libya," amid "alarming" reports that the country is the next destination.
“Late last night and earlier this morning, alarming reports from class members’ counsel and from the press emerged announcing the imminent removal of, inter alia, Laotian, Vietnamese, and Philippine class members being prepared for removal to Libya, a country notorious for its human rights violations, especially with respect to migrant residents,” the 10-page motion states. “Class members were being scheduled for removal despite not receiving the required notice and opportunity to apply for [Convention Against Torture] protection.”
U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy quickly barred the Trump administration from doing that, noting that such removals to any third-party countries already were forbidden under his prior order.
“If there is any doubt—the Court sees none—the allegedly imminent removals, as reported by news agencies and as Plaintiffs seek to corroborate with class-member accounts and public information, would clearly violate this Court’s Order,” Murphy wrote.
We’ll keep following this story for future developments.
This is unbelievable. Libya ? Isn’t there a civil war going on in Libya ? Ok, Google says there is civil unrest and we are deporting people to an unsafe country. What is wrong with this administration ? Thank you for keeping on top of this. I hope Rümeysa Öztürk is returned to Vermont quickly.