Law (US)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      The Trump administration trapped a wrongly deported man in a catch-22

      by

      It is difficult to find a term more fitting for the fate of the Maryland father Kilmar Abrego García than Kafkaesque.Abrego García is one of hundreds of foreign-born men deported under the Trump administration to the Cecot mega-prison in El Salvador as part of a macabre partnership with the self-declared “world’s coolest dictator”, Nayib Bukele.The US government has admitted it deported Abrego García by mistake. But instead of “facilitating” his return as ordered by the supreme court, the administration has trapped Abrego García in a catch-22 by offshoring his fate to a jurisdiction beyond the reach of legality – or, it would seem, basic logic or common decency.The paradox is this: the Trump administration says it cannot facilitate the return of Abrego García because he is in a prison in El Salvador. El Salvador says it cannot return him because that would be tantamount to “smuggling” him into the US.The absurdity of the position played out on Monday during an Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Bukele where the two men appeared to enjoy mocking the powerlessness of the US courts to intervene in the fate of anyone caught in the maws of the Trump administration’s deportation machine.“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said when asked about whether he would help to return Abrego García.There is no evidence that Abrego García is a terrorist or a member of the gang MS-13 as the Trump administration has claimed. But that is not really important here.“I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” Bukele said during a meeting with the US president on Monday. “They’d love to have a criminal released into our country,” Trump added.Trump’s lieutenants also jumped in on Monday, arguing that they could not intervene in the case because Bukele is a foreign citizen and outside of their control.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He is a citizen of El Salvador,” said Stephen Miller, a top Trump aide who regularly advises the president on immigration issues. “It’s very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens.”A district court injunction to halt the deportation was in effect, he added, an order to “kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here”.Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, repeated one of the Trump administration’s mantras: that US courts cannot determine Trump’s foreign policy. Increasingly, the administration is including questions of immigration in that foreign policy in order to defy the courts.Monday’s presentation was in effect a pantomime. Both sides could quickly intervene if they wanted to. But this was a means to an end. Miller said this case would not end with Abrego García living in the US.More broadly, it indicates the Trump administration’s modus operandi: to move quickly before the courts can react to its transgressions and, when they do, to deflect and defy until the damage done cannot be reversed. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      The case against Mahmoud Khalil is meant to silence American dissent | Moustafa Bayoumi

      by

      On Friday afternoon, a federal immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that Mahmoud Khalil, the lawful permanent resident who was arrested last month for his advocacy for Palestinian rights at Columbia University, was removable – that is to say, deportable – under the law.Let’s be absolutely clear about how outrageous this decision is. The judge, Jamee Comans, had given the Trump administration a deadline to produce the evidence required to show that Khalil should be deported. In a functional state, such evidence would rise to a standard of extreme criminality necessitating deportation.But not in this case and certainly not with the Trump administration, which has summarily deported hundreds of Venezuelan men based not on any verifiable criminal activity but simply on the basis of their body art. In response to the judge’s order, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, produced a flimsy one-and-a-half-page memo that admits that Khalil engaged in no criminal conduct. Instead, the memo, citing an arcane law, stated that Khalil’s “past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful … compromise a compelling US foreign policy interest”. In other words, the government was saying that Khalil’s views – including even his future views – were sufficient grounds for his deportation.Make no mistake. The government is seeking to deport Khalil solely for his constitutionally protected speech, a protection that applies to everyone in the United States. If the government succeeds, you could well be next. And don’t think that your citizenship will protect you. If the government can deny the basic right of freedom of speech to lawful permanent residents, what’s to stop them from going after citizens next? (The administration already has a plan to denaturalize US citizens.)Do we really want to live in a country where the government can decide which ideas are allowed to be heard and which cannot? I’m surprised that I even have to write these words. In an open society, free debate is encouraged and needed, while in a closed society, lists of proscribed ideas circulate and proliferate, and it’s frighteningly clear which way we’re headed. The Trump administration has already banned the use of words and phrases such as “equity”, “women” and “Native American” from government websites and documents, showing us how the open door of American democracy is slamming shut faster and louder than we could have imagined. And Khalil’s case is the test of what this government can achieve.Rubio alleges that Khalil engaged in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States”. But he provides no evidence whatsoever. Meanwhile, here’s what Khalil told CNN last year: “As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other. Our movement is a movement for social justice and freedom and equality for everyone.”It would seem that Rubio believes the phrase “freedom and equality for everyone” undermines US foreign policy interests. He may finally be right about something. But he’s wrong about Khalil, who clearly is not antisemitic. If Rubio wanted to cleanse the country of the noxious hatred of Jewish people, he could start by examining members of his own party. Marjorie Taylor Greene once speculated publicly that California wildfires were started by a beam from “space solar generators” linked to “Rothschild, Inc”, a disgusting nod to bizarre antisemitic conspiracy theories. Robert F Kennedy Jr said that the coronavirus had been manipulated to make “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people” the most immune to Covid-19. Elon Musk can barely keep his arm from extending into a salute, Dr Strangelove-style.It’s not some illusory antisemitism that has brought the wrath of the Trump administration raining down on Khalil. It’s the fact that he was standing up for Palestinian rights and calling out Israel’s actions, labelled genocidal by jurists, experts and international human rights organizations alike. But the US government does not want the American people to even entertain this discussion, which includes American complicity in this human catastrophe that is also US foreign policy, and so it will use every means at its disposal to forestall the possibility, including the bluntest instrument in the political book: mass fear.The attempt to deport Khalil is meant primarily to discipline the people of the United States into silence and conformity. For that reason alone, the government’s actions must be resisted. Healthy societies are based on free thinking and dissent. Unhealthy societies mobilize fear and intimidation to regulate opinion and manufacture consent. Today, that consent is about Israel. Tomorrow, it will be about something else. Either way, it will never be your choice, and it will always be theirs.Many legal observers were anticipating today’s ruling by Comans. Immigration judges are appointed by the Department of Justice. As such, they are employees of the executive branch and not the federal judiciary. The New York Times even noted that, had Comans dissented from the government, she would also have “run the risk of being fired by an administration that has targeted dissenters”. The ACLU speculated that the decision to deport Khalil had been “pre-written”, as it was delivered so fast. And Comans stated that the constitutional questions raised by the case will be heard in federal court in New Jersey and not in immigration court in Louisiana.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat doesn’t mean that Judge Comans couldn’t have ruled otherwise. On the contrary, the decision is another dangerous illustration of how much power the executive branch in the United States always wields, how much more power the Trump administration is willing to assume, and how deferential the institutions that could rein in this administration have become.This structural cowardice on the part of these institutions is doing great harm to the integrity of American democracy, often expressed in some sort of embarrassed whisper. Khalil, on the other hand, speaks loudly and eloquently for his position. At the end of his hearing in Louisiana, Khalil asked to address the court. “You said last time that there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness,” he said. “Neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process. This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family. I just hope that the urgency that you deemed fit for me are afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months.”Mahmoud Khalil is clearly a remarkable, principled man. He doesn’t deserve this unjust detention the US government is subjecting him to. The irony is that this United States doesn’t deserve a Mahmoud Khalil.

      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump DoJ unable to tell court where man wrongly deported to El Salvador is

      by

      Lawyers for the Trump administration were unable on Friday to tell a federal court exactly where the Maryland resident who was wrongly deported to El Salvador last month is or how he is, as the judge admonished the government at a heated hearing.The US district judge Paula Xinis said it was “extremely troubling” that the Trump administration failed to comply with a court order to provide details on the whereabouts and status of the Salvadorian citizen Kilmar Abrego García and she wanted daily updates on what the government is doing to bring him home.“Where is he and under whose authority?” Xinis asked in a Maryland courtroom.“I’m not asking for state secrets,” she said. “All I know is that he’s not here. The government was prohibited from sending him to El Salvador, and now I’m asking a very simple question: where is he?”The government side responded that it had no evidence that he is not still in El Salvador. “That is extremely troubling,” Xinis said.As Newsweek reported, Xinis added: “We’re not going to slow-walk this … We’re not relitigating what the supreme court has already put to bed.”The US supreme court on Thursday upheld the judge’s order to facilitate Abrego García’s return to the US, after a lawsuit filed by the man and his family challenging the legality of his summary deportation on 15 March.Abrego García has had a US work permit since 2019 but was stopped and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers on 12 March and questioned about alleged gang affiliation. He was deported on one of three high-profile deportation flights to El Salvador made up chiefly of Venezuelans whom the government accuses of being gang members and assumed special powers to expel without a hearing.Xinis on Friday repeatedly pressed a government attorney for answers but the administration defied her order for details on how or when it would retrieve Abrego García and claimed she had not given them enough time to prepare.“I’m not sure what to take from the fact that the supreme court has spoken quite clearly and yet I can’t get an answer today about what you’ve done, if anything, in the past,” Xinis said.Drew Ensign, an attorney with the Department of Justice, repeated what the administration had said in court filings, that it would provide the requested information by the end of Tuesday, once it evaluated the supreme court ruling.“Have they done anything?” Xinis asked. Ensign said he did not have personal knowledge of what had been done, to which the judge responded: “So that means they’ve done nothing.”The administration said in a court filing earlier on Friday that it was “unreasonable and impracticable” to say what its next steps are before they are properly agreed upon and vetted.“Foreign affairs cannot operate on judicial timelines, in part because it involves sensitive country-specific considerations wholly inappropriate for judicial review,” the filing said.Abrego García’s lawyers said in a Friday court filing: “The government continues to delay, obfuscate, and flout court orders, while a man’s life and safety is at risk.”The case highlights the administration’s tensions with federal courts. Several have blocked Trump policies, and judges have expressed frustration with administration efforts – or lack of them – to comply with court orders.Abrego García’s wife, US citizen Jennifer Vásquez Sura, has not been able to speak to him since he was flown to his native El Salvador last month and imprisoned. She has been rallying outside court and has urged their supporters to keep fighting for him “and all the Kilmars out there whose stories are still waiting to be heard”.The family sued to challenge the legality of his deportation and on 4 April Xinis ordered the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” his return. The administration challenged that order at the supreme court, which upheld Xinis’s order but said the term “effectuate” was unclear and might exceed the court’s authority.The justice department in a supreme court filing on 7 April stated that while Abrego García was deported to El Salvador through “administrative error”, his actual removal from the United States “was not error”. The error, department lawyers wrote, was in removing him specifically to El Salvador despite the deportation protection order.Asked at the White House media briefing on Friday if Donald Trump wants the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, to bring Abrego García with him when he visits the US on Monday, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the supreme court’s ruling “made it very clear that it’s the administration’s responsibility to ‘facilitate’ the return, not to ‘effectuate’ the return”.Similarly, the administration’s court filing said: “The court has not yet clarified what it means to ‘facilitate’ or ‘effectuate’ the return as it relates to this case, as [the] plaintiff is in the custody of a foreign sovereign. Defendants request – and require – the opportunity to brief that issue prior to being subject to any compliance deadlines.”Maya Yang, Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Ice can conduct enforcement actions in places of worship, US judge says

      by

      A federal judge on Friday sided with the Trump administration in allowing immigration agents to conduct enforcement operations at houses of worship despite a lawsuit filed by religious groups over the new policy.Dabney Friedrich, a US district judge in Washington, refused to grant a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs, more than two dozen Christian and Jewish groups representing millions of Americans.She found that only a handful of immigration enforcement actions had been conducted in or around churches or other houses of worship and that the evidence did not show “that places of worship are being singled out as special targets”.The groups argued the policy violated the right to practice their religion. Since Donald Trump retook the presidency in January, attendance has declined significantly, with some areas showing double-digit percentage drops, they said.The judge, though, found that the groups had not shown their drops were definitively linked to the church policy specifically, as opposed to broader increased actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) or other agencies.“That evidence suggests that congregants are staying home to avoid encountering ICE in their own neighborhoods, not because churches or synagogues are locations of elevated risk,” wrote Friedrich, who was appointed by the Republican president during his first term.That means that simply reversing the policy on houses of worship would not necessarily mean immigrants would return to church, she found.On 20 January, his first day back in office, Trump’s administration rescinded a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy limiting where migrant arrests could happen. Its new policy said field agents using “common sense” and “discretion” could conduct immigration enforcement operations at houses of worship without a supervisor’s approval.Plaintiffs’ attorneys claimed the new DHS directive departs from the government’s 30-year-old policy against staging immigration enforcement operations in “protected areas” or “sensitive locations”.The ruling comes as Trump’s immigration crackdown hits courtrooms around the country. On Thursday alone, another judge cleared the way for the administration to require people in the country illegally to register with the government even as the US supreme court ordered the administration to work to bring back a man mistakenly deported to prison in El Salvador.There have been at least two other lawsuits over that sensitive locations policy. One Maryland-based judge agreed to block immigration enforcement operations for some religious faiths, including Quakers.A judge in Colorado, though, sided with the administration in another lawsuit over the reversal of the part of the policy that had limited immigration arrests at schools. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Fear spreads as Trump targets lawyers and non-profits in ‘authoritarian’ takedown

      by

      As Donald Trump dismantles federal agencies, his administration is also creating a chill among non-governmental groups, cowing non-profits, intimidating universities and extracting commitments from law firms to support his aims.Officials have launched investigations into progressive and climate organizations, colleges and recipients of government grants. Experts worry that if nongovernmental groups are frightened into silence, US democracy may not weather the strain.“Trump has a strikingly authoritarian instinct,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political science professor who co-authored the book How Democracies Die. “This is what authoritarians do, they go after civil society,” he added, referring to organizations that exist outside the government and often seek to hold it to account.Some institutions are caving to the president’s demands, or staying quiet about their work in the hope of evading his attention.But others facing attacks have solidified their resolve, doubling down on their missions and even directly taking on the administration.“We will continue to vindicate the rights of our clients, and we do so without fear, because we know that we’re right,” said attorney Eric Lee, who represents a student facing deportation.Attacks on lawyersThe administration has cracked down in particular on lawyers, especially those who have investigated Trump or represented those who oppose him.Trump has targeted individual law firms and collectively attacked immigration attorneys, who he alleges engage in “unscrupulous behavior”. Some Biden-era officials told the Washington Post they have been unable to find representation because of the menacing effect Trump has had on the field. Some law firms have caved to the president’s demands, obeying his orders as a way to stay in business.Paul Weiss agreed to $40m in free legal services to the Trump administration. Willkie Farr & Gallagher committed to spending $100m in pro bono work to causes the firm and Trump support, and Milbank struck a similar deal for $100m in pro bono services.The onslaught prompted Democratic attorneys general to write a letter to the legal community, saying Trump’s goal was to “deter lawyers from representing politically disfavored clients”.The American Bar Association (ABA) has rejected the president’s attempts to undermine lawyers and the courts, saying in a statement that these actions show a “clear and disconcerting pattern”.“If a court issues a decision this administration does not agree with, the judge is targeted,” the statement said. “If a lawyer represents parties in a dispute with the administration, or if a lawyer represents parties the administration does not like, lawyers are targeted.” After issuing the missive, the association said it was “targeted” by a Trump official who told lawyers not to attend its meetings.Eric Lee, a lawyer for Momodou Taal, the British Gambian Cornell University student who faces deportation for participating in a pro-Palestinian demonstration, said it is “shameful, pathetic, feckless, cowardly” for major law firms and universities to acquiesce to Trump’s demands.It is also “historically uninformed” to believe giving in to these demands will get an authoritarian to moderate his positions, he said, encouraging lawyers to stand up for their profession.“We certainly are concerned about what is taking place,” Lee said. “But what can we do? If we stop fighting, then all is lost.”Chris Godshall-Bennett, the legal director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said that while the chilling effect is real, he doesn’t want people to believe they can’t get help. A lot of the attacks are “bluster”, he said, and there are lawyers willing to take a stand.“We have nothing to be afraid of, compared to the folks that we’re trying to help,” he said.Threatening non-profitsThe Trump administration is taking aim at non-profit advocacy groups, particularly if it sees their goals as antithetical to his aims. An array of non-profit employees told the Guardian that they are not willing to speak publicly about their work for fear of ending up on the administration’s radar.Some of the work in question was once seen as bipartisan or noncontroversial but is being treated as radical by the Trump administration, such as alleviating poverty, lowering utility bills or providing people with food.“I’m worried that the Trump administration is really intent on punishing who they perceive as their political opponents, even when those people, like, us are not at all political,” said one representative from a climate-focused organization, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of garnering attention from federal officials.Some advocates feel threatened for adhering to principles that were prioritized by the Biden administration.“Under Biden, we were asked to articulate the ways in which we would be using grant funds to live out environmental justice principles,” a representative from one grassroots non-profit in the north-east said. “Those are the values that are currently under attack.”In certain cases, groups who previously received federal money for their work are not only losing their funding, but also being targeted and demonized by administration officials.The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for instance, recently decided to terminate green grants worth $20bn, clawing back the money from Citibank, which was tasked with disbursing the funds. The justice department and FBI have launched a criminal investigation into three grantees, alleging possible legal violations including “conspiracy to defraud the United States”.Agencies have so far failed to legally support their claims of malfeasance, but have wrought havoc on the groups, with two non-profits exiting one of the coalitions being investigated.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe three grantees – Climate United Fund, the Coalition for Green Capital and Power Forward Communities – are suing EPA and Citibank in an effort to restore the funding.The Trump administration’s “unprecedented and unfounded actions” have put grantees “in impossible positions”, said a representative from Power Forward Communities.Organizations that received grants from Fema’s shelter and services program, are also being investigated, raising fear of additional crackdowns.“They’re not arresting people yet who work at non-profits, but everybody’s concerned that that is something that they might eventually do,” one person who works at an immigration non-profit told the Guardian.Many groups also worry that the Trump administration could seek to revoke their non-profit 501c3 status.In November, the House passed the “non-profit killer bill”, which would hand the executive branch broad powers to do so in the name of fighting “terrorism”. Many are concerned it will also pass the Senate if put up for a vote. But even in the absence of such legislation, advocates fear the administration will strip non-profits’ legal status on technical grounds.“We’re being especially careful to dot our Is and cross our Ts when it comes to meeting [501c3 legal] requirements,” said the north-east environmental justice advocate. The group is ensuring strict adherence to legal lobbying caps, and are being more cautious when using language criticizing the Trump administration – or even using politicized terms such as “environmental racism” – in written communications, the person said.If the attacks on 501c3 status come to fruition, non-profits may struggle to find legal representation and, given the attacks on the legal profession, be left to defend themselves in court.“There are so many organizations and charities that have benefited from the help of law firms, often pro bono assistance from firms that want to do good in their community, and the way they have to do that is through assisting with their legal services,” one non-profit executive told the Guardian. “The fact that firms now may no longer be able to do that leaves many organizations wondering if we are unprotected.”Trump’s attacks have also forced groups to be more cautious when considering filing or joining lawsuits that would make them more visible to federal officials, a worker at another immigration non-profit said, noting that non-profits’ ability to keep their tax legal status may depend on their shying away from their missions.Defunding universitiesUniversities, which are often hotbeds of progressive politics and dissent, are also facing repression. In early March, the administration announced the cancelation of $400m in grants and loans to Columbia University, alleging the school has failed to protect students from antisemitic harassment. In response, school officials yielded to a series of changes demanded by federal officials, sparking outrage from advocates.Weeks later, officials went after Harvard University, announcing a plan to review some $9bn in contracts and multiyear grants over accusations that the university also did not protect Jewish students and promoted “divisive ideologies over free inquiry”. The following day, Princeton University said dozens of its federal research grants were suspended over allegations of the promotion of antisemitism.The administration also paused $175m in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania over its inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s college sports.“I’ve studied authoritarianism and authoritarian regimes for more than 30 years [and] authoritarian regimes tend to go after universities because they are usually very influential centers of dissent,” said Harvard’s Levitsky, who was among the 700 who signed a letter calling for the university to resist pressure to capitulate to Trump’s demands.The Trump administration also announced a task force on alleged antisemitism at 10 major universities, placed 60 colleges and universities under investigation for allegations of antisemitic harassment and discrimination, and arrested current and former college students for participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.Jerry Nadler, a member of Congress from New York, said Trump is taking advantage of “the real pain American Jews face” in order to “wield control over the truth-seeking academic institutions that stand as a bulwark against authoritarianism”.Jason Stanley, a Yale professor who studies fascism, announced in March that he would be leaving the university to work at the University of Toronto, in part because of the US political climate. Columbia University’s decision to give in to Trump’s demands played a pivotal role in his decision to accept an offer from Toronto, he told the Guardian.Other academics are more hopeful. Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University, said he is not giving into pressure because “if we get intimidated then imagine what happens in the society as a whole”. Instead, the university is attempting to defend itself, showing its record of success on the four dozen projects from which officials have pulled federal funding.“There is of course concern everywhere,” Crow said, “but now is the time to make your case stronger than ever”. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump signs order targeting law firm behind $787.5m Fox defamation suit

      by

      Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday punishing the law firm that helped Dominion voting systems obtain a $787.5m settlement from Fox for lies about the 2020 election.The order against the firm, Susman Godfrey, marks the latest effort by the president to punish attorneys and firms who have opposed his interests.The order seeks to cripple the firm by limiting the firm’s attorneys from accessing government buildings, revoking security clearances and essentially making it impossible for the firm to represent anyone who has business before the federal government.Trump’s rationale for targeting the firm was not immediately clear.“There were some very bad things that happened with these law firms,” he said in the oval office on Wednesday when he signed the order.Susman Godfrey represented Dominion voting systems in its lawsuit against Fox, which ended in a landmark settlement to avoid a trial. On Wednesday, a Delaware judge ruled in a separate lawsuit that the conservative outlet Newsmax Media defamed Dominion with its false reporting about a rigged 2020 election.Trump has also issued orders punishing five other firms for connections to political rivals: Covington & Burling, Perkins Coie, Paul Weiss, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale.Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale all have filed suit against Trump and successfully earned preliminary court orders blocking them. Susman Godfrey on Tuesday filed an amicus brief on behalf of several high-ranking government officials supporting Perkins Coie’s legal challenge.“This firm is very involved in the election misconduct,” Stephen Miller, a top White House aide, said on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPaul Weiss negotiated a widely-criticized settlement with Trump to have the order against it rescinded.Experts say the orders are blatantly unconstitutional and violate the constitution’s guarantee of freedom of expression and the right to counsel. They also say they are an obvious anti-democratic effort by the president to intimidate lawyers from challenging his administration in court.Several firms – Skadden, Arps, Meagher, & Flom; Milbank LLP; and Willkie, Farr, & Gallagher – have entered into preemptive settlements with the Trump administration to try and avoid executive orders. Many of the country’s largest and most prominent firms have stayed silent as several firms have been targeted. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Judge gives Trump administration deadline to justify Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation

      by

      An immigration judge ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration has until 5pm on Wednesday to present evidence as to why Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate, should be deported. She said that if the evidence does not support deportation, she may rule on Friday on his release from immigration detention.Khalil, a green-card holder and leader in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University last year, was detained on 8 March. The Trump administration claims that his presence has adverse foreign policy consequences, an argument decried by his legal team as a blatant free speech violation. The government has not provided any evidence that he broke the law, a typical condition for revoking permanent residency.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can “either can provide sufficient evidence or not”, said the judge, Jamee Comans, from her courtroom in Jena, Louisiana. “If he’s not removable, I’m going to terminate this case on Friday.”A lawyer for DHS told the judge: “We have evidence we will submit.”During the hearing, Khalil sat beside an empty chair, his immigration attorneys and counsel appearing over video on a flatscreen TV. Behind him sat a handful of supporters, some of whom had been directed by security to remove keffiyehs. Khalil, in navy blue detention-issued clothes, sat calmly, sometimes fingering a set of prayer beads.The proceedings were delayed as Comans tried to pick the attorneys out of the nearly 600 people – media, supporters and observers – attempting to join the video call.“This is highly unusual,” began Comans, in reference to the number of people attempting to watch the hearing.“Your honor, I’d appreciate it if you could let my wife in,” Khalil said softly into the microphone. A moment later, the face of Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, appeared on the screen.“Your honor, there is obviously a lot of public interest in this case, and we would appreciate if there could be online access” granted to the public, began Khalil’s immigration lawyer, Mark Van Der Hout. Comans denied this request and added, seeming frustrated, that she was “very, very close” to making the rest of the legal team appear in person as well.Van Der Hout said they had requested DHS’s evidence of the allegations more than two weeks ago and had not received a response. “We cannot plead until we know the specific allegations,” he added.The DHS also alleges that Khalil failed to disclose on his visa application that he had previously worked in a Syrian office of the British embassy and for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), before becoming a member of a pro-Palestinian activist group at Columbia.Van Der Hout requested to postpone a follow-up hearing Comans had set for Friday, noting: “We may have to depose the secretary of state” due to the nature of the charges against Khalil.Comans declined, telling him: “You’re in the wrong court for that.” Indicating she wanted to move the case along, she added: “I’m like you, Mr Van Der Hout: I’d like to see the evidence.”Apart from his immigration case, Khalil is challenging his detention in a separate case before a federal judge in New Jersey. More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      US supreme court blocks ruling that 16,000 fired federal workers must be rehired

      by

      The US supreme court has handed Donald Trump a reprieve from a judge’s ruling that his administration must rehire 16,000 probationary workers fired in its purge of the federal bureaucracy.A day after ruling in the White House’s favor to allow the continued deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, the court gave the White House a less clear-cut victory in halting the order by a California court that dismissed workers from six government agencies must be rehired.The court struck down by a 7-2 majority last month’s ruling by US district court judge William Alsup because non-profit groups who had sued on behalf of the fired workers had no legal standing.It did not rule on the firings themselves, which affected probationary workers in the Pentagon, the treasury, and the departments of energy, agriculture, interior and veterans affairs.“The district court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case,” the unsigned ruling read. “But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing. This order does not address the claims of the other plaintiffs, which did not form the basis of the district court’s preliminary injunction.”Two of the court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.The victory, though limited, is likely to embolden the Trump administration in the belief that the spate of legal reverses it has faced since taking office can be eventually overturned in the supreme court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, due largely to three rightwing judges Trump nominated to the bench during his first presidency.The extent of Tuesday’s victory was qualified by the fact that it does not affect a separate order by a judge in Maryland applying to the same agencies plus several others. Judge James Bredar of the Maryland federal district court ordered the administration to reinstate workers in response to a case brought by 19 states and the government of Washington DC.In the California ruling, the court heard how staff were informed by a templated email from the office of personnel management that they were losing their jobs for performance-related reasons. “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest,” the email said.While accepting that workforce reductions were acceptable if carried out “correctly under the law”, Alsup said workers had been fired for bogus reasons.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee, and say it was based on performance, when they know good and well, that’s a lie,” he said.In filings to the supreme court, the acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, argued that Alsup had exceeded his powers.“The court’s extraordinary reinstatement order violates the separation of powers, arrogating to a single district court the executive branch’s powers of personnel management on the flimsiest of grounds and the hastiest of timelines,” she wrote. “That is no way to run a government. This court should stop the ongoing assault on the constitutional structure before further damage is wrought.” More