In Front of Our Noses: Defying the Courts
Administrative "errors."
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”-George Orwell.
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Via Politico: A court halted his deportation. The Trump administration deported him 28 minutes later.
Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador, had been in immigration detention since 2022 while deportation proceedings against him were pending. But on May 7, shortly after a federal appeals court ordered the government to keep him in the United States, immigration authorities deported him back to his native country.
[…]The episode is reminiscent of three other deportations that courts have declared illegal or improper in recent months:
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was deported to El Salvador in violation of an immigration judge’s order.
Daniel Lozano-Camargo, a Venezuelan man who was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court-approved settlement.
A Guatemalan man, identified in court by the initials O.C.G., who was deported to Mexico in what the administration now acknowledges was an error because he was not given a chance to exercise his legal right to raise fears that he would be tortured there.
Despite court orders, the Trump administration did multiple oopsies and sent them away anyway.
In court papers this week, officials blamed a “confluence of administrative errors,” including missed emails and an inaccurate roster of passengers on the May 7 deportation flight. The Justice Department declined to comment, and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.
A lot of people will dismiss all as “what’s the big deal?” combined with “mistakes happen,” “they are in the country illegally,” “this is just a handful,” and/or “who cares what happens to a bunch of brown people?” (Granted, the last one is probably mostly unspoken, although not always).
But the real issue here is an ongoing pattern of ignoring courts. This is a serious problem and marks the Trump administration as willing to act in a lawless fashion because they can.
This is not something that should be ignored or downplayed.
But it is happening right in front of our faces. Are we going to look, or just ignore it and change the subject?
I’m curious as to why the willful refusal to obey the courts hasn’t made its way to the Supreme Court — not even when they are pretending to misunderstand a Supreme Court order.
I know that there is always a lot of careful jockeying, looking for the right case that will be sympathetic and hopefully set the right precedent, but it’s not like there aren’t plenty to chose from.
That seems to be the way of things. Someone has to pin them down completely and absolutely or they will keep doing stuff. I really don’t see that happening, even if SCOTUS demands it happen. There’s always another mistake or direction or missed deadline.
I think that what is happening is a legal version of the shell game. The courts need specific persons doing (or not doing, though that is more difficult) specific things that defy a court order. At which point said person is thrown in jail.
So there’s a lot of lawyers appearing in courtrooms saying things like, “I don’t know” and “I’ll have to find that out”. And then maybe at the next hearing, it’s a different lawyer.