Related, if trump is summarily deporting citizens under his new mass deportation regime, citizenship and an ability to appeal to the law isn’t going to get people back in the country. The executive runs border security
Also, CBP regards major waterways as "borders" if they terminate in an body of water that has a national border (like, say, an ocean, or Lake Ontario). So e.g. they have been known to assert the right to warrantless search within 100 miles of the Mississippi.
In addition to taking concrete action to rein in the Court, we have got to demand a lot of powers that got expanded as part of War on Terror get sunsetted so they aren't also lying "about like a loaded weapon".
In 2020, he sent them further than that. I tried to get a news outlet interested in finding out what authority they were using to be operating in Central Oregon which is more than 100 from a border or our coast. No luck.
Sotomayor's Seal Team Six hypo hits hard (where is she legally wrong? Roberts accuses her of hyperbole but where is she wrong??), but where the Criminal Presidency really worries me is with CBP and ICE, particularly that it's at the core of Trump's ideology & priorities, and staffed with MAGA cops
(1) Americans are *already* sometimes deported by mistake (often happens with someone with serious mental health issues leading to decreased capacity); and
(2) Although Americans have the legal right to return to the US, as you note, how will that right be vindicated?
If the president tells federal workers to illegally imprison me and hands them all presidential pardons, they're all safe from prosecution but in theory maybe a judge can get me out eventually. Somehow. If I can even talk to a lawyer.
But if the president instead tells federal workers to kill me...
Tagging @steveinskeep.bsky.social here because he apparently hadn't considered any of this prior to interviewing Trump's lawyer about the immunity case.
Sure, some politicians think it looks bad to have the courts mess with them over and over. But trump has learned that you can bulldoze over norms to do what you want.
When I was in law school, my conlaw prof told us this was the obvious implication of giving Gitmo detainees (some) due process but also not holding the Bush admin guys accountable. It led directly to the drone strike regime since that conveniently took care of anyone who might assert their rights.
I still remember in the weeks after 9/11 the US bombed some people in Somalia, reportedly way out isolated on a road far from anywhere. It was the first time I'd heard of random people out in the world being targeted for airstrike, in a situation where one could imagine helicoptering in troops.
Obviously it wasn't the first airstrike I'd ever heard of, not even an anti-terrorism airstrike (maybe the missile strikes after the USS Cole bombing?), but it was the first indication that bombs would be seen as a substitute for handcuffs, based on uncertain identification. Long before Gitmo.
I still can't get over the willful lack of imagination required to think this ruling isn't effectively a blank check. As I keep saying, too many people are worried about norms while the right has been playing for keeps.
“in theory maybe a judge can get me out eventually. Somehow.”
People in Iran, China, and Russia have put that theory to the test many times and found it wanting.
Can a president just order INS to deport whomever to wherever? Who would stop him? The conscience of the agent? What about the next in line when the disloyal agent gets disappeared?
Judges have absolutely ordered the government to bring back people who were improperly deported.
I don't think it's commonplace (I know it happened because I vaguely remember a case or two that made the national news, suggesting it's unusual) but a judge can do it. Unless that changes, of course.
Couldn't an executive just grant a pardon, as all the cases would be federal? Once you are outside the US, it's all federal, and immigration control falls squarely under official duties.
Everyone doing illegal shit to the person being deported can be protected from consequences. More illegal shit can be done to them, also without consequence.
I was just saying that illegal deportations *have* been reversed after the fact by judges, it's possible. Eventually. Expensively. Painfully.
even if you talk to a lawyer and the judge orders you released, the president can just... direct the officers to ignore the court's order (and hand pardons)
On the one hand, the justices commune with the dead to find [the true meaning of the] law; on the other, the President is an unknowable entity whose motives cannot be scrutinized even by them and certainly not by us mere mortals.
Yeah I don’t know what about this process of reckless power consolidation makes any of these scholars think anyone will be in a position to politely request their release on technical grounds when the gulags are established in earnest.
They're clutching to the sacred beliefs of their profession. We've been fucked every since members of one of the 2 major parties made their animating political thought "kill all governance, consolidate power for a select elite".
You could argue when that started, but that's when we were fucked.
It also has the annoying law professor's law-as-abstraction thing going on: supposing judges will still let you out, how long do you sit in jail waiting for your hearing, how much is your life wrecked?
It's better to tell Presidents that they can't do bad things before they try, not after.
The "Oh, it'll be okay, you can go to court and the judge will fix everything" attitude is out-of-touch and callous to the harms people endure even under the best circumstances. Kinda pisses me off. Would like to know how long the professor would be willing to sit in jail to have his day in court.
This all gets back to how SCOTUS has screwed all of this up and gotten it completely backwards: we in fact do want Presidents to be worried about getting second-guessed in the courts and at the polls, and to worry about being prosecuted and/or impeached. Immunity should be limited if it even exists.
In all holiness, this.
WHY THE FUCK DO PRESIDENTS NEED TO BREAK THE LAW?
People seem to assume they must because of some misguided notion of "realism". If Presidents need to break the law to do their jobs, it's bad law and they should try like anyone else to get the law changed. This is not hard.
...and I realize, arguably, this has just happened, but now the law says, "Everything the President officially does is beyond the reach of the law," which is, in fact, the opposite of changing law. It's just law's nullification.
in software development, when you're trying to get your thing to work, one often turns off security features that might be in the way. It can be tempting to ship it that way and call it good.
Sysadmins and security engineers hate this for obvious reasons. It's bad design & creates vulnerabilities.
