SIX HOURS. "Federal immigration officers may deport immigrants with as little as six hours’ notice to countries other than their own even if officials have not provided any assurances that the new arrivals will be safe from persecution or torture." www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

New, from me: They are trying to shove through the massive reconciliation bill as quickly as possible. Stepping back, the bill is: *an assault on the poor to benefit the richest *an assault on freedom *an assault on the future donmoynihan.substack.com/p/how-the-re...

How do the lawyers prosecuting family regulation matters think about the nature and goals of their job? Turns out - it depends - and it doesn’t necessarily align with judgments about what’s best for the kids the system is purporting to protect. @annaarons.bsky.social new paper out in Penn Law Review

1/2 On left: Trump administration might have just moved detainees from SD Texas to ND Texas to deport them under Alien Enemies Act Proclamation On right: Standing SD Texas judicial order prohibiting detainees removal from SD Texas under the Alien Enemies Act Proclamation

Today, the @nytimes.com published an article on how the GEO Group - one of the world’s largest for-profit prison companies - provides ICE with mass immigration surveillance services.

BREAKING: Trump admin says it mistakenly deported a Maryland father who had *withholding of removal* back to El Salvador on March 15. Govt told court Monday it won't bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back. "What.The.Fuck..." one govt attorney told me. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc... @theatlantic.com

Breaking News: The law firm Jenner & Block sued the Trump administration, making it the second firm recently targeted by President Trump to fight back in court.

Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem making content in front of the imprisoned men of El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center mega-prison www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

"A terrified young student, snatched off the street by a masked police force taken thousands of miles across the country without anyone knowing. It is as flatly authoritarian as anything we have ever seen in this country," says @chrislhayes.bsky.social on Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk's detention.

This guy is in one of the worst prisons in the world with no way out and may spend the rest of his life there because, it appears, he has an autism awareness tattoo in honor of his little brother. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The President does not have the constitutional or statutory authority to dictate the content of voter registration forms. This EO is an incredibly dangerous power grab. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

And here we go -- Fox News is now saying we should get rid of "due process" because it's too cumbersome. Brian Kilmeade: "But I also think it's not practical to think that we can do due process on 8 million people." www.mediamatters.org/brian-kilmea...

"While the Government enjoys significant discretion in administering [the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program], that discretion does not extend to abandoning statutory obligations or rendering the program effectively inoperative." Opinion and order: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

BREAKING: After a federal judge issued an injunction ending the refugee resettlement funding freeze, Rubio just started terminating all of the contracts. Judge Jamal Whitehead issues a follow-on injunction tonight ordering the terminated agreements reinstated unless Rubio actually follows the law.

NEW: The Trump administration invokes the state-secrets privilege, saying it will give Judge Boasberg no more information about deportation flights to inform his decision about whether the gov't defied his orders storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Here is Trump's full memo to Bondi and Noem lashing out at the legal system, which includes significant attention on immigration litigation: www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

Federal judges are increasingly at their wits' end with the disingenuous, bad faith representations of the Trump administration in court. Today, one judge told DOJ lawyers, “The court is not going to be gaslit."

WHOA. On March 15, a Cornell PhD student with UK and Gambian citizenship, here on a student visa, filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn Trump's EO aimed at foreign students accused of "antisemitism. Last night, the DOJ emailed asking him to come to ICE to be detained and put into removal proceedings.

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com, me on “The Tom and Daisy Presidency,” and how there’s only so much courts can do, especially under current law, when at least part of the administration’s goal is to break things—and “let other people clean up the mess they had made.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/o...

Rubio’s position seems to be: - We get to say who is a terrorist. Our decision is final. It can’t be challenged. Just trust us. - Once we decide you are a terrorist, we can immediately deport you. No judges. - After we deport you, we can make you rot in a foreign prison. No criminal charges needed.

“Linked to pro-Palestinian views” is apparently now grounds for arrest and due-process-free deportation.

CAN’T DO THAT

If you're critical of the US government and you are planning to cross the US border any time soon, today is a good day to review EFF's border search pocket guide: www.eff.org/document/eff...

BREAKING 🚨 🚨 🚨 French scientist denied US entry after phone messages critical of Trump found France’s research minister said the scientist was traveling to Houston for a conference when his phone was searched www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

NEW: The FDA largely protected food inspectors from staff cuts. But the credit card freeze in food science labs, the axing of a key food safety committee and funding cuts to state inspectors all limit efforts to keep food safe: www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/h...

New, from me: Trump is whitewashing American history, removing not just people, but also the stories, images, and values to anyone who does not conform to his impoverished vision of America. Here is a partial inventory. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/whitewashi...

I am a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. Earlier today, the president attempted to illegally fire me. This is corruption, plain and simple. I will see the president in court. My full statement:

NEW STATEMENT FROM CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: "For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."

2/ This does not instill confidence that the Government has accurately or properly identified individuals under the Alien Enemies Act: Government declaration: "[T]he lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose." Full context:

The government's argument about these alleged gang members boils down to: "Our precogs say they're going to commit crimes soon so we have to imprison them before they do." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Hi, I'm the guy who used to oversee the federal government's agency IT telecommunications contracts. This is extremely bad. There is absolutely no need for this. Not only is it a huge security exposure, but the simplest explanation for this is that it is meant to be a security exposure.

So the DOJ is basically refusing to engage in questioning over whether the administration (as it appears) violated a direct federal court order, while “border czar” Homan says that, despite the injunction, “We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think…We’re coming.” Just wow.

Imagine the possibilities with this criterion for immigration exclusion, deportation, and beyond

“A New York Times review of the flight data showed that none of the planes in question landed in El Salvador before the judge’s order and that one of them did not even leave American soil until after the judge’s written order was posted online.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/u...

DOGE is trying to layer on administrative burden to prevent disabled people and older adults from accessing Social Security benefits to which they’re entitled. People in rural communities will be hit especially hard. Field offices are already overwhelmed.

Here we are again

DOJ replies that because the oral language was not included verbatim in the written order, it was ok to ignore what the court announced in court from the bench. DOJ then tells a federal judge that their client has instructed him to make that argument. [sidenote: that is nuts]

With @dahlialithwick.bsky.social on the many implications—all horrifying—of the Trump administration reviving seemingly unconstitutional Red Scare–era laws to abduct and disappear Mahmoud Khalil, without due process, in retaliation against his protected speech. slate.com/news-and-pol...

This power grab is unprecedented, unbounded, and unconstitutional.

The New York Times is the first to put out comprehensive estimates on the cost of a year without U.S.A.I.D. and they’re higher than I thought: - 1.65 million deaths from AIDS - 500,000 from lack of vaccines - 550,000 from lack of food aid - 290,000 from malaria - 310,000 from TB

So the Admin has defied the order of a federal judge. www.newsweek.com/rubio-touts-...

Our client worked in the arts in Venezuela. He is LGBTQ. His tattoos are benign. But ICE submitted photos of his tattoos as evidence he isTren de Aragua. His @ImmDef attorney planned to present evidence he is not. But never got the chance because our client has been disappeared.

Posting tonight ti shine a light on what the Alien Enemies Act looks like IRL. Our @immdef.bsky.social client fled Venezuela last year & came to US to seek asylum. He has a strong claim. He was detained upon entry because ICE alleged his tattoos are gang related. They are absolutely not. 🧵

This is Marco Rubio retweeting El Salvador’s president mocking the Trump administration’s open defiance of a judge’s order. Every single Democratic senator voted to confirm Rubio. Some like Tina Smith, in her interview with me, now say they got it wrong and regret it. They all should say it.

This should terrify every person in this country. The use of machine learning systems to approximate an individuals views on war and then, if they are here lawfully on a visa, tag them for deportation is about as sci-fi dystopian as it gets. www.axios.com/2025/03/06/s...

Yet another story reporting Musk/DOGE "reform" efforts involving the cutoff, program or contract cancellation of existing fed spending only to have them replaced by Musk's own companies as the recipient/beneficiary of fed program funds. /1 www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/t...

Some of my Columbia Law School colleagues and I offer our thoughts on legal issues with the Administration's March 13, 2025 letter to our University's president, and its threat to academic freedom. balkin.blogspot.com/2025/03/a-ti...

I've written about the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Fun trivia: When the administration that signed it tried to stop what it xenophobically called an "invasion" of French immigrants, James Madison argued deportation was unconstitutional absent war: repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol120/i...

Take a moment today to read about a few of the young children whom Trump and Musk killed by shutting down USAID. The blame for these deaths falls on them. There will be hundreds of thousands more dead kids before their lethal crusade against foreign aid ends. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Holy crap. The DOJ is arguing that the President can unilaterally deport anyone he wants without ANY statutory authority, just on his inherent authority as President over national security. That is a terrifying claim to make and not one that has ever been recognized before in US history.