Obama may be out of the White House, but his influence still remains strong. He’s still desperate for more power.
And Barack Obama foils the Trump admin with just four words.
Obama Appointed Judge Claims “Nazis Got Better Treatment” Than Violent Tren de Aragua Deportees
Tempers flared and voices rose in a federal appeals court on Monday afternoon as a judge appointed by former President Barack Obama clashed with Trump administration lawyers over a controversial plan to swiftly deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The dramatic showdown centered on the administration’s use of a centuries-old law to ship 260 suspected illegal migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador earlier this month, igniting a fierce debate over due process and presidential power.
Judge Patricia Millett, a veteran of the bench since 2013, took the lead in the courtroom, her hand resting thoughtfully on her chin as she peppered a Justice Department attorney with pointed questions. She zeroed in on the lack of safeguards for those swept up in the operation, which relied on the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. “There were planeloads of people. There were no procedures in place to notify people,” Millett declared. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act [during World War II] than has happened here.”
She didn’t stop there. “There’s no regulations, and nothing was adopted by the agency officials that were administering this,” she continued. “The people weren’t given notice. They weren’t told where they were going. They were given [to] those people on those planes on that Saturday and had no opportunity to file [for] habeas [corpus].” Her words painted a vivid picture of a rushed, chaotic process that left little room for the migrants to challenge their fate.
The Trump administration had raced to the appeals court to overturn a ruling by DC District Judge James Boasberg, who slapped a 14-day restraining order on the deportation flights just over a week ago. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign stepped up to defend the White House, bristling at Millett’s historical comparison.
“We certainly dispute the Nazi analogy,” he fired back. “But more importantly, the fact is that individual plaintiffs were able to file habeas in time in order to secure relief [to] five individual plaintiffs.”
Millett wasn’t swayed. She countered that those habeas corpus petitions—legal challenges to unlawful detention—only succeeded because Boasberg’s order had hit the pause button.
In a striking hypothetical, she added, “If the government says, ‘We don’t have to give process for that,’ then y’all could’ve picked me up on Saturday and thrown me on a plane,” suggesting the administration might claim she was “a member of [Tren de Aragua] and giving me no chance to protest it.”
The legal skirmish stems from Trump’s decision to label Tren de Aragua a terrorist group, unlocking the Alien Enemies Act’s sweeping authority to bypass standard deportation protocols. Five of the deported migrants, now backed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have sued the administration, arguing their rights were trampled. The ACLU stood firm in court on Monday, defending Boasberg’s temporary block on the flights.
Ensign came out swinging, slamming Boasberg for “second-guessing” the president’s directive. Over the course of the nearly two-hour hearing, the discussion veered into the law’s dusty past, including its use by President Harry Truman after World War II and its role in the internment of Japanese Americans decades earlier.
The act, invoked just three other times in U.S. history, grants a president vast control over noncitizens during wartime—but its modern deployment has sparked a firestorm.
Much of the operation remains cloaked in mystery, with national security cited as the reason for limited public details. Ensign argued the judiciary was overstepping, grumbling, “I think the intrusion upon the war powers and foreign policy powers of the president … is utterly unprecedented.”
Millett shot back with equal force: “It is an unprecedented action as well. So of course, there’s no precedent for it, because no president has ever used this statute this way—which isn’t to say one way or the other whether it can be done, but simply to say we are in unprecedented territory.”
She clarified that Boasberg’s order didn’t handcuff Trump’s national security authority but rather targeted sloppy execution by lower-level officials. “There’s nothing there about enjoining his war or national security powers,” she said.
When Ensign likened the ruling to a judge redirecting naval ships, Millett cut in: “Hang on. Hang on. Asserting a power to do that is not ordering ships to relocate in foreign waters, right? That is a straight-up judicial process that’s allowed by the Supreme Court and Circuit precedent.”
While Millett pressed the attack, Ensign found an ally in Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee who turned the heat on the ACLU. Walker probed whether Boasberg even had the authority to halt the flights, asking, “Could you have done everything in a Texas district court that you did in this district court?” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt held his ground: “Perhaps your honor, but I don’t think it was necessary.”
As the judges wrestled with the law’s limits, the clock ticked on Boasberg’s restraining order, leaving the courtroom crackling with tension and the outcome anything but certain.
Stay tuned to The Federalist Wire.Barack Obama foils Trump admin with just four words
Obama may be out of the White House, but his influence still remains strong. He’s still desperate for more power.
And Barack Obama foils the Trump admin with just four words.
Obama Appointed Judge Claims “Nazis Got Better Treatment” Than Violent Tren de Aragua Deportees
Tempers flared and voices rose in a federal appeals court on Monday afternoon as a judge appointed by former President Barack Obama clashed with Trump administration lawyers over a controversial plan to swiftly deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The dramatic showdown centered on the administration’s use of a centuries-old law to ship 260 suspected illegal migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador earlier this month, igniting a fierce debate over due process and presidential power.
Judge Patricia Millett, a veteran of the bench since 2013, took the lead in the courtroom, her hand resting thoughtfully on her chin as she peppered a Justice Department attorney with pointed questions. She zeroed in on the lack of safeguards for those swept up in the operation, which relied on the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. “There were planeloads of people. There were no procedures in place to notify people,” Millett declared. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act [during World War II] than has happened here.”
She didn’t stop there. “There’s no regulations, and nothing was adopted by the agency officials that were administering this,” she continued. “The people weren’t given notice. They weren’t told where they were going. They were given [to] those people on those planes on that Saturday and had no opportunity to file [for] habeas [corpus].” Her words painted a vivid picture of a rushed, chaotic process that left little room for the migrants to challenge their fate.
The Trump administration had raced to the appeals court to overturn a ruling by DC District Judge James Boasberg, who slapped a 14-day restraining order on the deportation flights just over a week ago. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign stepped up to defend the White House, bristling at Millett’s historical comparison.
“We certainly dispute the Nazi analogy,” he fired back. “But more importantly, the fact is that individual plaintiffs were able to file habeas in time in order to secure relief [to] five individual plaintiffs.”
Millett wasn’t swayed. She countered that those habeas corpus petitions—legal challenges to unlawful detention—only succeeded because Boasberg’s order had hit the pause button.
In a striking hypothetical, she added, “If the government says, ‘We don’t have to give process for that,’ then y’all could’ve picked me up on Saturday and thrown me on a plane,” suggesting the administration might claim she was “a member of [Tren de Aragua] and giving me no chance to protest it.”
The legal skirmish stems from Trump’s decision to label Tren de Aragua a terrorist group, unlocking the Alien Enemies Act’s sweeping authority to bypass standard deportation protocols. Five of the deported migrants, now backed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have sued the administration, arguing their rights were trampled. The ACLU stood firm in court on Monday, defending Boasberg’s temporary block on the flights.
Ensign came out swinging, slamming Boasberg for “second-guessing” the president’s directive. Over the course of the nearly two-hour hearing, the discussion veered into the law’s dusty past, including its use by President Harry Truman after World War II and its role in the internment of Japanese Americans decades earlier.
The act, invoked just three other times in U.S. history, grants a president vast control over noncitizens during wartime—but its modern deployment has sparked a firestorm.
Much of the operation remains cloaked in mystery, with national security cited as the reason for limited public details. Ensign argued the judiciary was overstepping, grumbling, “I think the intrusion upon the war powers and foreign policy powers of the president … is utterly unprecedented.”
Millett shot back with equal force: “It is an unprecedented action as well. So of course, there’s no precedent for it, because no president has ever used this statute this way—which isn’t to say one way or the other whether it can be done, but simply to say we are in unprecedented territory.”
She clarified that Boasberg’s order didn’t handcuff Trump’s national security authority but rather targeted sloppy execution by lower-level officials. “There’s nothing there about enjoining his war or national security powers,” she said.
When Ensign likened the ruling to a judge redirecting naval ships, Millett cut in: “Hang on. Hang on. Asserting a power to do that is not ordering ships to relocate in foreign waters, right? That is a straight-up judicial process that’s allowed by the Supreme Court and Circuit precedent.”
While Millett pressed the attack, Ensign found an ally in Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee who turned the heat on the ACLU. Walker probed whether Boasberg even had the authority to halt the flights, asking, “Could you have done everything in a Texas district court that you did in this district court?” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt held his ground: “Perhaps your honor, but I don’t think it was necessary.”
As the judges wrestled with the law’s limits, the clock ticked on Boasberg’s restraining order, leaving the courtroom crackling with tension and the outcome anything but certain.
Stay tuned to The Federalist Wire.
