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    In Texas Borderland, Trump’s Immigration Push Suffers Its Worst Legal Defeat Yet

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    Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. is a Trump nominee with conservative credentials. But he found White House claims about a Venezuelan gang “invasion” went too far.Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a bespectacled, soft-spoken 56-year-old nominated by President Trump, turned his high-backed leather chair toward a government lawyer at the federal courthouse in Brownsville, Texas, and asked a question. Can the president define what counts as an invasion, then declare that an invasion is happening, and then use a 1798 war powers law to expel the so-called invaders?“Yes,” answered Michael Velchik, a Justice Department lawyer.Judge Rodriguez followed up: Wouldn’t that make Mr. Trump’s powers under the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, “effectively limitless?”The question hinted at a groundbreaking ruling that Judge Rodriguez issued on Thursday when he found that Mr. Trump was wrong to claim that the activities of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang in the United States, amounted to an “invasion” that justified invoking the wartime law.The decision was the most sweeping ruling issued so far by a federal judge blocking the most aggressive prong of Mr. Trump’s effort, one that was already used to deport nearly 140 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador on March 15. It comes after a Supreme Court decision in early April that Venezuelan detainees facing potential deportation under the Alien Enemies Act could file lawsuits in the district courts where they were being held.Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. during his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017.C-SPANThe result of the court’s order has been that challenges to a key piece of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, which began in Washington, are spreading around the country, filling the dockets of federal judges and drawing tough and skeptical questioning — even from jurists with impeccable conservative credentials.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Texas Judge Unseals ICE Document Detailing Deportation Notices: an English Form and at Least 12 Hours

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      A declaration by an ICE official says an English-language form was “read and explained” to the detainees and that they had “no less than 12 hours” to express the intent to challenge their deportations. On April 7, the Supreme Court ruled that the government must give Venezuelan migrants notice “within a reasonable time” and the chance to legally challenge their removal before being deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Exactly how much notice the Trump administration considered appropriate in response to the Supreme Court’s edict was revealed in a document unsealed during a hearing on Thursday in Federal District Court in Brownsville, Texas.Before Saturday, when the Supreme Court issued a second order, which blocked the deportation of a group of Venezuelan migrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, detainees slated for deportation were given a one-page form that stated “if you desire to make a phone call, you will be permitted to do so,” according to the unsealed document, a four-page declaration by an official from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They then had “no less than 12 hours” to “express an intent” to challenge their detention, and another 24 hours to file a habeas corpus petition asking for a hearing before a judge, the declaration said. The form itself is written in English, but “it is read and explained to each alien in a language that alien understands.” The hearing was part of a case whose plaintiffs are three Venezuelan men being held at El Valle Detention Facility, roughly 50 miles from Brownsville.Lawyers for detainees held elsewhere, who have sued in the Northern District of Texas, have disputed the government’s claims about being given notice. They also have said that the form was not explained to detainees and that they were simply told to sign the document, which the ICE declaration identified as Form AEA-21B.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lawyers for Venezuelans Challenge Alien Enemies Act Deportations in Texas

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      Broadening their efforts to stop the Trump administration from using a rarely invoked wartime statute to carry out deportations, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday asked a federal judge in Texas to bar the White House from using the law to send Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.The filings by the A.C.L.U., submitted in Federal District Court in Brownsville, Texas, were in direct response to a Supreme Court decision on Monday. That ruling permitted the migrants to challenge efforts to deport them under the wartime law, known as the Alien Enemies Act, but only in the place they were being held.The three Venezuelans identified in the Texas filings — albeit only by their initials — had already secured a court order from a federal judge in Washington last month shielding them from being flown to El Salvador under President Trump’s invocation of the act. But the Supreme Court, in its ruling, vacated the order by that judge, James E. Boasberg, saying that the A.C.L.U.’s case on behalf of the men should have been filed in Texas, not Washington.On Tuesday, the A.C.L.U. filed a similar case in New York, noting that two of the Venezuelans subject to Mr. Trump’s proclamation had been moved from a detention center in Texas to one in the town of Goshen, in Orange County, N.Y. An emergency hearing has been scheduled in that case for Wednesday morning in Federal District Court in Manhattan.Mr. Trump’s efforts to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport scores of Venezuelan migrants have set off one of the most contentious legal battles of his second term. It began last month, after the president invoked the act, which has been used only three times since it was passed in 1798, to authorize the deportation of people he claims were members of Tren de Aragua, a violent Venezuelan street gang.The A.C.L.U. immediately challenged Mr. Trump’s use of the act in court filings in Washington, even as the administration rushed more than 100 Venezuelan migrants on to planes to El Salvador. Once there, they were put in a megaprison called CECOT, known for its brutal conditions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Strong Winds Send U.S. Customs Blimp on a 600-Mile Trip Across Texas

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      Wind blasts dislodged the aircraft from its moorings in South Padre. The blimp drifted all the way to the Dallas area, where it crashed into power lines.Strong winds dislodged a U.S. Customs and Border Protection surveillance blimp in South Padre Island, Texas, this week, sending it on an unplanned journey of nearly 600 miles across the state until it crashed into power lines outside Dallas, the authorities said. The blimp, which was about 200 feet long, broke free from its tether just after 3 p.m. Monday during a “severe wind event,” the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations division said in a statement. Maximum wind gusts were around 30 miles per hour that day, slightly stronger than normal, said Ben Ellzey, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Brownsville.Operators lost contact with the white blimp shortly after it became loose, according to the statement. The agency asked residents to report any sighting of it.According to the Air and Marine Operations division, Quinlan Texas Fire and Rescue found the blimp on Tuesday in Hunt County, about 30 miles east of Dallas.Chief Ryan Biggers of the South Hunt County Fire Rescue said he was puzzled when the department received a “weird” call about 6:40 a.m. Wednesday from Border Patrol seeking help with recovering the blimp. “I was kind of unsure what they meant,” Chief Biggers said.When he responded, he saw white material hanging over trees and power lines, as if a white tarp had been laid out, he said. “I couldn’t even tell it was a blimp,” Chief Biggers said.The balloon was too tangled for fire equipment, he said, adding that a heavy rotator wrecker was needed to lift the debris and what remained of the blimp off the power lines it had crashed into.Jake Cunningham, operations manager at Benson Bros. Wrecker Service, a professional towing company that was called in for assistance with recovering the blimp, said, “Fortunately, we are a little more experienced in some of the stranger calls.”Mr. Cunningham said that two operators had extracted the balloon using a 60-ton rotator, a crane with a long arm that spins, in a process that took about two hours. “It was a delicate situation,” he said.Chief Biggers, reflecting on the event, said, “I never received a call like that, and I doubt I ever will again.”The U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to offer additional comment. More details will be shared as they become available, the agency said.The Federal Aviation Administration declined to comment.The air and marine operations branch of Customs and Border Protection, which is responsible for stopping the illegal movement of people and cargo approaching the country’s borders, employs about 1,800 agents and other support personnel and has 240 aircraft and 300 marine vessels.U.S. Customs and Border Protection uses aerostat systems, also called blimps, to provide aerial surveillance at the border. The blimps are attached to the ground and can hover as high as 15,000 feet, with a search area of approximately 200 feet, according to the agency. They can weigh as much as 2,400 pounds. More

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      How the Biden-Trump Border Visits Revealed a Deeper Divide

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      Their approaches to immigration represent a test of voters’ appetite for the messiness of democracy, pitting the president’s belief in legislating against his rival’s pledge to be a “Day 1” dictator.Even the participants in President Biden and Donald J. Trump’s overlapping visits to Texas on Thursday seemed to sense there was something remarkable about their near encounter along the southern border.Rarely do the current and former commanders in chief arrive on the same scene on the same day to present such sharply different approaches to an issue as intractable as immigration. Even rarer still was the reality that the two men are most likely hurtling toward a rematch in November.“Today is a day of extraordinary contrast,” declared Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who had appeared alongside Mr. Trump.But the dueling border events were about something even more fundamental than immigration policy. They spoke to the competing visions of power and presidency that are at stake in 2024 — of autocracy and the value of democracy itself.Perhaps the most surprising facet of the split screen was that Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden agreed on some of the basic contours of the border problem: that the current situation, with migrant crossings setting a new monthly record of nearly 250,000 in December, is unsustainable.“It’s long past time to act,” Mr. Biden said.“I didn’t get everything I wanted in that compromise bipartisan bill, but neither did anybody else,” President Biden said on Thursday as he visited the border, in Brownsville, Texas. “Compromise is part of the process. That’s how democracy works.”Kenny Holston/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More