Saturday Rewind: 'A winning fight'
Project Salt Box's co-founder celebrates a major victory against ICE warehouses.
This past term, the Supreme Court left up to 1.3 million lawfully present immigrants — who fled war, disasters, and civil unrest, followed all the rules and went through the heavy vetting of the Temporary Protected Status program — vulnerable to the designs of Donald Trump.
A slim majority upheld the 14th Amendment’s guarantees of birthright citizenship, potentially inspiring a Lost Cause movement that is one justice away from upending the constitutional “right to have rights.”
Border authorities have the high court’s blessing to physically block the tired, poor and huddled asylum seekers from physically setting foot on U.S. soil.
It’s clear that the Supreme Court has been, at best, an inconsistent check on Trump’s extreme immigration agenda, but the recent collapse of one of his cruelest programs shows the judiciary isn’t the only restraint in his constitutional order.
Thanks to organizing, civic engagement, and investigative journalism, the administration’s $1 billion ambition to create an archipelago of ICE warehouses collapsed last month.
Project Salt Box’s co-founder Michael Wriston, who played no small role in lighting a fire under a nationwide movement against it, recounted his “stunned disbelief” upon learning about reports that the Trump administration effectively dropped plans for seven of the warehouses.
“I could not imagine that day would come, but here we are,” Wriston told All Rise News in an interview.
In June, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration plans to “sharply scale back” its warehouses, which have been blocked by federal judges and resisted by communities in red and blue states.
Throughout that time, Project Salt Box kept the public informed about where they were being built, how they would affect the environments, what the government spent on them using taxpayer money, and how they were being litigated against and opposed. It is not hyperbole to say that the group helped spark an enormous and successful nationwide movement.
Wriston says its work is not done.
“They’re still seeking detention space, just not nearly in the numbers that they were previously, and so, we’re going to keep watching them,” he said. “We, the people, are going to keep an eye out.”
The victory makes him optimistic but not complacent.
“Beyond this July 4th, and beyond this administration, democracy is constantly under threat so long as we let those forces continue to have a foothold,” he said. “We’re not out of the woods, yet. So continue to build those community bonds. Continue to be strong. Show up. Protest. File FOIA requests. Write letters. Whatever it is you bring to the fight, do it because it is a winning fight so long as you stay engaged.”
In other interviews this week:
Court Accountability’s Lisa Graves and I reflect on the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara.
Election expert David Becker celebrates another narrow Supreme Court victory defending mail-in voting.
Law professor Jed Shugerman reacts to being cited by Justice Sonia Sotomayor about how the Slaughter decision handed Trump a power beyond that of an English king.
Free subscribers can watch the interview with Wriston on YouTube here — and all of the other videos on the All Rise News playlist of Legal AF.
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