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      Federal Judge Casts Doubt on Trump Arguments in Venezuelan Migrants Case

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      The judge pressed a lawyer for the Justice Department on the government’s role and responsibilities in the men’s deportation and incarceration in El Salvador.A federal judge on Wednesday night expressed skepticism about the Trump administration’s reasons to avoid seeking the return of scores of Venezuelan immigrants who had been expelled to El Salvador in March, saying he was inclined to order officials to provide more information on the arrangement between the American and Salvadoran governments.The questions raised by the judge, James E. Boasberg, came at a hearing in Federal District Court in Washington, where lawyers for the deported men claimed that because the administration had sent them to a prison in El Salvador under an apparent agreement with the Salvadoran government, it should be responsible for facilitating their return to U.S. soil.Over the past several weeks, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union have secured orders from judges in several courts across the country stopping the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law, to summarily deport Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a terrorism prison in El Salvador.But at least so far, the lawyers have not been able to protect about 140 Venezuelan migrants who are already in Salvadoran custody after the United States sent them on charter flights under the act on March 15.The hearing in Washington on Wednesday night was held in part to debate two crucial issues: what role the Trump administration played in having the men detained in the Salvadoran prison in the first place, and whether officials could be held accountable for bringing them back to the United States.In seeking to answer the first of those questions, Judge Boasberg pressed a Justice Department lawyer about a recent statement by President Trump concerning Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador in the same set of flights as the Venezuelan migrants.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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      UnitedHealth’s Move to End Cyberattack Loan Lifeline Upsets Medical Providers

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      The company lent roughly $9 billion to practices affected by a vast cyberattack on its payment systems last year. Medical practices are now suing the health care colossus, saying it is pressuring them to repay funds.Two independent medical practices in Minnesota once hoped to expand operations but have spent the past year struggling to recover from the cyberattack on a vast UnitedHealth Group payment system.Odom Health & Wellness, a sports medicine and rehabilitation outfit, and the Dillman Clinic & Lab, a family medicine practice, are among the thousands of medical offices that experienced sudden financial turmoil last year. The cyberattack against Change Healthcare, a division of United, paralyzed much of the nation’s health-care payment system for months.Change lent billions of dollars to medical practices that were short on cash but has begun demanding repayments.Dillman and Odom are suing United in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, accusing the corporation of negligence related to the cyberattack and claiming they sustained excessive expenses because of the attack’s fallout.In addition, Odom and Dillman asserted in court filings that the company’s insurance arm, UnitedHealthcare, has in turn been denying claims to cover patient care for being submitted late.Lawmakers viewed the chaos caused by the cyberattack as a result of United’s seemingly insatiable desire to buy up companies like Change, alongside doctors’ practices and pharmacy businesses. The widespread disruption was a reminder of how deeply United’s sprawling subsidiaries had become embedded in the nation’s health care system.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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      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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      Attacks on Judges Undermine Democracy, Warns Ketanji Brown Jackson

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      Speaking to a judicial conference, the Supreme Court justice said attacks were designed to intimidate and influence.Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Supreme Court’s newest member, denounced on Thursday what she described as “relentless attacks” on judges, and an environment of harassment that “ultimately risks undermining our Constitution and the rule of law.”“ Across the nation, judges are facing increased threats of not only physical violence, but also professional retaliation just for doing our jobs,” said Justice Jackson, speaking at a conference for judges held in Puerto Rico. “And the attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity.”Justice Jackson did not mention President Trump by name nor cite any specific attacks against the nation’s judges. However, her remarks came as Mr. Trump and his allies have repeatedly targeted judges who have blocked key pieces of his agenda, even calling for judges who have ruled against him to be impeached.Those calls drew a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in March, who described them as “not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”Threats of physical violence against judges have also been on the rise, with judges facing bomb threats and a rash of delivery of anonymously dispatched pizzas, a prank apparently designed to send a message that their home addresses can be found.The forceful comments by Justice Jackson were rare for the justice. Since joining the court in 2022, she has focused many of her public appearances on telling the personal story of her rise to become the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.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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      Judge Blocks Trump Order Ending Union Protections for Federal Workers

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      An order signed by President Trump last month was aimed at stripping collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal workers.A federal judge in Washington blocked President Trump from ending collective bargaining with unions representing federal workers, stymying a component of Mr. Trump’s sweeping effort to strip civil servants of job protections and assert more control over the federal bureaucracy.Judge Paul L. Friedman of the Federal District Court in Washington ruled in favor of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents tens of thousands of federal workers across the government. Without including an opinion explaining his decision, Judge Friedman ruled that the executive order from Mr. Trump was unlawful, and he granted a temporary injunction blocking its implementation while the case proceeded.“An opinion explaining the court’s reasoning will be issued within the next few days,” Judge Friedman wrote in the two-page order.The order, if implemented, would strip collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal workers, effectively banning them from joining unions.Those unions have been a major obstacle in Mr. Trump’s effort to slash the size of the federal work force and reshape the government. With every stroke of the pen from Mr. Trump enacting new orders aimed at tightening control over the federal bureaucracy, federal worker unions have responded with lawsuits, winning at least temporary reprieves for some fired federal workers and blocking efforts to dismantle portions of the government.Mr. Trump had framed his order stripping workers of labor protections as critical to protect national security. But the union noted that it targeted agencies across the government, some of which had no obvious national security portfolio, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency.“The administration’s own issuances show that the president’s exclusions are not based on national security concerns,” the suit said, “but, instead, a policy objective of making federal employees easier to fire and political animus against federal sector unions.” More

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      Judges Worry Trump Could Tell U.S. Marshals to Stop Protecting Them

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      The marshals are in an increasingly bitter conflict between two branches of government, even as funding for judges’ security has failed to keep pace with a steady rise in threats.On March 11, about 50 judges gathered in Washington for the biannual meeting of the Judicial Conference, which oversees the administration of the federal courts. It was the first time the conference met since President Trump retook the White House.In the midst of discussions of staffing levels and long-range planning, the judges’ conversations were focused, to an unusual degree, on rising threats against judges and their security, said several people who attended the gathering.Behind closed doors at one session, Judge Richard J. Sullivan, the chairman of the conference’s Committee on Judicial Security, raised a scenario that weeks before would have sounded like dystopian fiction, according to three officials familiar with the remarks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations: What if the White House were to withdraw the protections it provides to judges?The U.S. Marshals Service, which by law oversees security for the judiciary, is part of the Justice Department, which Mr. Trump is directly controlling in a way that no president has since the Watergate scandal.Judge Sullivan noted that Mr. Trump had stripped security protections from Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, and John Bolton, his former national security adviser. Could the federal judiciary, also a recent target of Mr. Trump’s ire, be next?Judge Sullivan, who was nominated by President George W. Bush and then elevated to an appellate judgeship by Mr. Trump, referred questions about his closed-door remarks to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which stated its “complete confidence in those responsible for judicial security.”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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      Inside the Urgent Fight Over the Trump Administration’s New Deportation Effort

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      The push to deport a group of Venezuelans raises questions about whether the government is following a Supreme Court order requiring that migrants receive due process.On Thursday evening, lawyers helping Venezuelan immigrants most at risk of being removed under an 18th-century wartime powers act received an ominous alert: U.S. immigration officials were handing out notices at a detention facility in Texas, informing migrants that they were considered enemies under the law and would be removed from the country.“I am a law enforcement officer authorized to apprehend, restrain and remove alien enemies,” read the notice, a copy of which was filed in federal court by the American Civil Liberties Union. “Accordingly, under the Alien Enemies Act, you have been determined to be an alien enemy subject to apprehension, restraint and removal from the United States.”The notice said the migrant could make a phone call but did not specify to whom. The single-page notice also did not mention any way to appeal the order.The Supreme Court ruled this month that migrants must receive advance notice that they are subject to removal under the rarely invoked wartime powers law — and that they must have an opportunity to challenge their removal in court.News of the notices being handed out at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, warning of impending deportations prompted a flurry of legal actions by the A.C.L.U. on Friday in several courts. Early Saturday, the Supreme Court stepped in with unusual speed, ruling that no flights could depart.“The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the court said. It is unclear when the justices will make a ruling on whether deportation flights can continue.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