David Kurtz‬
‪@davidkurtz.bsky.social‬
10m
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana is among the handful of Trumpiest judges in America and even he can’t countenance the Trump administration’s lawless deportation actions.

talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...


‪David Kurtz‬
‪@davidkurtz.bsky.social‬
10m
In an order Friday, Doughty expressed his suspicion that the Trump administration had just deported a 2-year-old U.S. citizen with his undocumented Honduran mother over the objections of the child’s father “with no meaningful process.”

‪David Kurtz‬
‪@davidkurtz.bsky.social‬
10m
Meanwhile, in the Western District of Texas, U.S. District Judge David Briones ordered the immediate release of a Venezuelan couple that the Trump administration had swept up in its Alien Enemies Act detentions.

‪David Kurtz‬
‪@davidkurtz.bsky.social‬
10m
In a scathing opinion, Briones became the first judge in the country to rule that the Trump admin had wrongly designated detainees as enemy aliens, finding the the govt had presented nothing but unsubstantiated accusations against the DC-area couple that they were members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

‪David Kurtz‬
‪@davidkurtz.bsky.social‬
10m
All of these new developments played out against the backdrop of an extraordinary March 14 memo by Attorney General Pam Bondi, obtained by USA Today, that expressly told law enforcement there would be no due process for Alien Enemies Act detainees:

‪David Kurtz‬
@davidkurtz.bsky.social‬
10m
“An alien determined to be an Alien Enemy and ordered removed under the Proclamation ... is not entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge, to an appeal of the removal order to the Board of Immigration Appeals, or to judicial review of the removal order in any court of the United States.”

‪David Kurtz‬
‪@davidkurtz.bsky.social‬
10m
The Bondi memo – dated the same day as President Trump’s Alien Enemies Act proclamation – was the administration’s effort to operationalize the AEA detentions, which we now know had been underway for weeks and which would culminate with the notorious March 15 deportation flights.

‪David Kurtz‬
‪@davidkurtz.bsky.social‬
10m
SCOTUS has since rejected the argument that AEA detainees are not entitled to due process. But the admin got the jump on the judiciary, and dozens of detainees remain imprisoned in El Salvador without having received due process. The effort to free them is now grinding through the courts.

‪David Kurtz‬
‪@davidkurtz.bsky.social‬
10m
If the brazen lawlessness in the deportation cases has a silver lining it’s that it has quickly made plain to judges nationwide not just how much is at stake but how fast and loose the Trump administration is playing with the rule of law.

‪David Kurtz‬
‪@davidkurtz.bsky.social‬
10m
A cynical view might be that the judiciary’s awakening to the threat has made little difference, but that requires ignoring a growing body of court orders adverse to the administration, including some that have prompted it to retreat in key areas.

David Kurtz
‪@davidkurtz.bsky.social‬
Morning Memo, a non-cynical but cold-eyed rundown of the essential political news in the Trump II era:

morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com
April 28, 2025 at 9:59 AM