How one reads Thursday's ruling ordering the federal government to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia's return depends upon how much (or how little) one expects *this* administration to turn square corners.
What a horrific situation for Mr. Garcia and his family. If our government is paying El Salvador to house deportees I would assume our government would have access to their government, prison officials to communicate and return Mr. Garcia to the U.S. . The whole deportation did not follow the law, and I believe the government knew that but continued to just disappear people. It is very frightening to think they have the power to do this, meaning it could happen to you or me.
Has America been sold to the highest bidder?
Prayers to the Garcia family and hope this gets resolved with a safe return.☮️❤️🇺🇸
That you even ask the question “Has America been sold to the highest bidder?” suggests two things in response - merely asking the question makes it so . . . and - it was sold to the only bidder!
Has America been sold to the highest bidder? Answer: YES. Witness 1: Charles Swabb in the oval the other day when the some tariffs were paused DJT “Chuck you just made $9B on that move, didn’t you?” 2. All the cryptocurrency contributions he & family get from foreign actors/investors. 3. Elon Musk awarding himself government contracts at FAA, etc.
This, plus the increasing risk of a recession, as well as global anger, seems to be decimating the travel industry, as well.
Yesterday, on the news, they showed largely empty airports in the USA, relatively speaking, and an executive from Delta was giving a perspective. I guess this may be one area that may see a decline in price. Sadly, this often means lost jobs, as well.
This was all unnecessary, unless the intent is to terrorize the public.
The intent, in almost everything this "administration" (better labeled a regime) does, is to terrorize the public into silence and obedience. It is the authoritarian playbook. In the instance of immigrants, the intent is to terrorize them enough so that they'll "self-deport". After all, better that than being sent to a foreign gulag to rot in perpetuity.
The news media needs to hire more experts in law as well as economics and not just English and journalism majors.
Too often they just "rinse and repeat" what others are saying, thinking that is the safe bet and thus cause more confusion. I do not have cable so I do not know what CNN reported and find their online coverage often lacking some depth, so not sure what they said there either.
When the media says "a win" for X, Y or Z, it is often misleading since that may not actually be the case when one looks under the hood, and I am not a legal mechanic, so thanks.
Your analysis of the Abrego Garcia case is the best and most inclusive and constructive that I have read. Hoping the best of success for Judge Xinis! Judge Steven Robinson, circuit court judge, State of Florida (retired).
Should you not also have bolded " For its part, the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps." That strikes me as an invitation to the DoJ to show itself as cooperative with/respectful of the courts, just as the court is invited to be respectful of foreign affairs authority placed in the President. Consider two possible sharings at today's hearing:
(1) The government has already communicated to the government in El Salvador its strong wish that Abrego Garcia be returned, and informed it that until that is done it will halt any further payments to it under its agreement respecting detainees
(2) The foreign affairs responsibility of the government precludes our sharing with the courts any steps we have taken to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return.
Were the administration the least bit attentive to the importance of retaining the Court's good will, it would file something like the first rejoinder.
There's a (spectacular) movie called "The Dancer Upstairs." An important part of the premise is that there's a revolution going on in some (unnamed and unspecified) Latin American country, but it's not an all out and declared revolution. It's a series of destructive acts intended to corrode the standing government, and install a character called "President Ezekiel."
In that same sense, the current US government is corroding the United States one piecemeal act after another. And it includes, as you quote, cracks like an expression of doubt that a US judge has any authority over the leader of some other country. The nexus is omitted: how did Garcia get to that other country? Doesn't the US Executive branch bear entire responsibility for that placement, and isn't it then responsible to be more lawful, and more likely correct, about such transfers? But the deck, as you partially imply, is stacked against the people of the United States, because "regularity" has been suspended, no longer exists, and its absence is supported by the current Legislative and Judicial branches.
Question: Assuming the guys jailed in El Salvador remain in jail, what will happen to them? Will they eventually be released and if so, when? As far as I know, none of them have been convicted of a crime under US or El Salvadorian law except maybe for entering the US without proper documents which is a misdemeanor under US law. Or will they remain in jail for the rest of their lives? Life imprisonment for failing to have the proper documents when a person enters the US seems like very cruel and unusual punishment to me.
The US has paid El Salvador $6 million to (illegally) detain the individuals we sent them. I find it hard to believe that this payment will be the only one demanded by El Salvador.
If/when the US stops paying, El Salvador will likely let whoever's still alive out of jail, and not stop them if/when they attempt to return to the US.
Trump and the rest of his clown car are too stupid to understand they've likely gotten themselves into a protection racket where they're the mark, not the people running the shakedown. The President of El Salvador, like everybody else, outsmarted them.
IMO, the biggest part of this crime is manny, if not most, of the people we sent to that horrible concentration camp,
don't have a gang affiliation at all. So they don't have people from their gang to protect them on the inside.
I don't think US lawyers and family members have heard from *any* of them since they were rounded up and put on an aircraft. In US prisons it's hard to prevent gang violence. In El Salvador it's much harder than that. Unless those deprtees have gang affiliates, friends or family in that prision to help them, they're already in a very unsafe situation. No amount of US $ can totally protect them in the first place. Prision gangs don't take "no" for an answer.
If nothing else, the court should hold regular short term status conferences to force the administration to repeatedly and publicly say or not say what it is or is not doing to effectuate the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia. Whatever they say or not say will be enlightening. Silence - by long intervals of not asking - is not an option.
This ruling is much better than the other one. The most important part of it is going to turn out to be the requirement that the Administration provide information on its efforts to facilitate. No, they aren't going to get away with a conclusory, false "there's nothing we can do" declaration. If they do that they're going to end up with people on the witness stand being questioned by the judge. And you have to lay a foundation for the state secrets privilege that simply can't be laid here.
What's actually going to happen is this one is going to work. The Administration will either in the short or long term realize they are boxed in by the requirement to provide real information, and will capitulate and get the guy out.
To speak in (some) defense of Justice Roberts et al., the administration's bad faith conduct also means that the Court can't be confident a direct order will be followed, and if Trump gets away with explicitly disregarding even a single order, that's presumably the ballgame. So part of the strategy here, it seems to me, is to bend over backwards for the administration to avoid any such confrontation or, at a minimum, build up sufficient track record to weather the inevitable political attacks that will follow.
I find it hard to imagine that the Trump administration will agree to follow the law in this case. Their statements and their use of CECOT prison in El Salvador make it perfectly clear that their intention is to evade oversight by the judicial branch.
The Supreme Court justices had better don their holsters. The ultimate showdown is coming soon. The outcome will reveal whether we are still living in a democracy or if we are now in a tyranny where even U.S. citizens can be "disappeared" to foreign prisons without trial or redress.
This is a very good point and seems quite consistent with how Roberts in particular has been behaving. Allowing the administration to continue at least claiming to respect the system does indeed help avoid or delay an explicit constitutional crisis.
Of course, however, it leaves us with an implicit one instead. If the court itself has to simply play the game to uphold the optics of the rule of law, then it has de facto already lost the power to check the executive branch. In effect, the court has averted an open constitutional crisis by giving up in advance. And maybe that really is their best move insofar as it keeps the door open for future administrations to return to baseline.
I appreciate the good faith and strategic thinking, but I wonder what you (since he’s not here to speak for himself) think Roberts’ endgame is. Is he trying (1) simply to avoid direct confrontation with the administration and so just protecting the courts from a fight the courts cannot win, (2) to protect the rule of law by essentially making it harder for the administration to « disobey » and a full blown constitutional crisis thus less likely, or (3) to stay out of the political arena by putting government action in a light (i.e. determining it be unconstitutional or illegal) that conjures a political response from citizens? In short, is he primarily protecting his turf, the administration, or (the semblance of) the rule of law ?
I don't think those are mutually exclusive, and in some ways they're actually complementary. Legally speaking, a novel 5-4 decision in favor of an unsympathetic litigant is just as binding as an unambiguous 9-0 decision with overwhelming public opinion behind it, but as a practical matter Trump is much more likely to win the former showdown than the latter if he wants to. So the calculation, I assume, is to protect the Court's reputation and relationship with the Administration by ducking the marginal fights (or throwing Trump the occasional bone, as they did here in Abrego Garcia), so that it's on the strongest possible footing if and when confrontation becomes unavoidable.
I am not a lawyer and I understand that wiggle room allowed with facilitate and effectuate. The justice dept with its statement drove a semi through it. Shame!!
The Supreme Court's claim that the scope of "effectuate" needs clarification seems like chickening out. For example, Merriam-Webster defines it as "to cause or bring about (something) : to put (something) into effect or operation ". Are there really any other meanings that could apply in this context?
Although we all hope that Mr. Garcia is still alive, none of us knows if he is still alive. The district court judges have, consistently, methodically and competently, already exposed the duplicity and prevarication of DOJ attorneys appearing before them. Carefully-worded expressions of the latter are contained in the Opinions of some of those judges. The statement put out last night by the DOJ tells just about all we need to know in order to predict what will happen in the proceedings now resumed before Judge Xinis: more duplicity and prevarication by DOJ but *now* emboldened by the "tone" of yesterday's Per Curiam Opinion. (I could use but won't use other descriptive words.) Many/most of us know the consequences of right and truth not mattering.
Your raising the question of whether he is still alive has caused me to reflect. One approach the administration could potentially take here is for the president to make a phone call requesting Mr Garcia's immediate execution in El Salvador. Following the Trump v USA ruling, the president would have at worst presumptive immunity for any such action and more importantly there would likely be no admissible evidence for such a call since official acts cannot be introduced as evidence. Combined with a statement from El Salvador simply claiming the Mr Garia (or anyone else) died of natural causes while in custody, this would pretty easily leave the administration in the clear with really no consequences that I can see.
Trump doesn't need to request the execution of Garcia.
The reason Garcia's family sent him to live with a family member in Maryland is because the gang Barrio 18 had threatend his life on several occasions, because Garcia refused to join the gang. The family first tried moving several times to get away from the gang. When that didn't work, they sent Garcia to the US.
Barrio 18 is one of the gangs that "run" the prision the US sent Garcia and other detainees. During Trump 1.0, Garcia's deportation was blocked because of the likelihood he would be killed if he was sent back to El Salvador. Well, now he's there, and Barrio 18 (and any other El Salvadorian gang) can easily get to him.
Good point. Reporting today seems to indicate that the administration says they don't know where Mr Garcia is, so you're quite right they probably don't even need to contemplate my scenario; just let the prison do whatever dirty work is involved.
I don't know if Trump/administration would be willing to gamble that its request for the murder of a detainee would remain 'secret.' And even if it did remain secret, can you imagine the public firestorm that would result from the 'the died of natural causes' "reason" for not having Mr. Garcia returned to the US?
I certainly hope you're right and I think *probably* you are. Far more likely, I would guess, is that they just make a bunch of claims about how they simply can't get him back and we never actually find out his fate--which is only a shade different in the end. Just really concerns me that these types of things are "in play" at this point. Truly never thought I would live to see the day.
What can the District Court judge do to minimize delaying actions by the Government, I presume the Court would try and get firm commitments from the Gov't on specific actions they would take to "effectuate" the Courts order and by when? But if compliance is inadequate does the District Court have any true power on it's own to drive compliance? To your point it sure does seem that Trump can stall this effort easily.
I don’t see any realistic alternative to the incremental approach. The Court knows it ultimately has to rely on political suasion, so it needs to build its case carefully. But it doesn’t operate in a vacuum either. Trump is beset on several sides and the opposing forces draw strength from each other. The Court has come down firmly on the side of due process, at least rhetorically, and others can use that as a cudgel.
In physics we talk about equilibrium and the necessity to balance forces to achieve it. Each entity - Congress & the Courts - are doing what they see possible to counter any given expression of force from the Executive to keep our government in existence - equilibrium? - even if, especially in the moment, it doesn't look like it.
I too see "[no] realistic alternative to the incremental approach" of 'forces' from SCOTUS. This dynamic is at the core of our nature and the world as we understand it.
I hope DOJ’s statement cited above is mostly posturing.
I must say that the intrusion into the president’s role in foreign affairs of a directive to repatriate a wrongly deported person seems pretty small, and the corresponding deference due should also be small.
Does anybody know the legal ”brains” behind the Trump administration? They seem to be threading the needle in a way that infers strategy? And I can’t imagine Trump having the wherewithal. But an “evil” lawyer should stand out? Isn’t that the whole point of the rule of law? I understand that politico/lay people can pull the levers - but it should be hard for them to find a lawyer.
What a horrific situation for Mr. Garcia and his family. If our government is paying El Salvador to house deportees I would assume our government would have access to their government, prison officials to communicate and return Mr. Garcia to the U.S. . The whole deportation did not follow the law, and I believe the government knew that but continued to just disappear people. It is very frightening to think they have the power to do this, meaning it could happen to you or me.
Has America been sold to the highest bidder?
Prayers to the Garcia family and hope this gets resolved with a safe return.☮️❤️🇺🇸
That you even ask the question “Has America been sold to the highest bidder?” suggests two things in response - merely asking the question makes it so . . . and - it was sold to the only bidder!
Has America been sold to the highest bidder? Answer: YES. Witness 1: Charles Swabb in the oval the other day when the some tariffs were paused DJT “Chuck you just made $9B on that move, didn’t you?” 2. All the cryptocurrency contributions he & family get from foreign actors/investors. 3. Elon Musk awarding himself government contracts at FAA, etc.
Yes, it is absolutely terrifying.
This, plus the increasing risk of a recession, as well as global anger, seems to be decimating the travel industry, as well.
Yesterday, on the news, they showed largely empty airports in the USA, relatively speaking, and an executive from Delta was giving a perspective. I guess this may be one area that may see a decline in price. Sadly, this often means lost jobs, as well.
This was all unnecessary, unless the intent is to terrorize the public.
I hope he makes it home safely to the USA, soon.
The intent, in almost everything this "administration" (better labeled a regime) does, is to terrorize the public into silence and obedience. It is the authoritarian playbook. In the instance of immigrants, the intent is to terrorize them enough so that they'll "self-deport". After all, better that than being sent to a foreign gulag to rot in perpetuity.
I agree
Thank you!
We often need clarification.
The news media needs to hire more experts in law as well as economics and not just English and journalism majors.
Too often they just "rinse and repeat" what others are saying, thinking that is the safe bet and thus cause more confusion. I do not have cable so I do not know what CNN reported and find their online coverage often lacking some depth, so not sure what they said there either.
When the media says "a win" for X, Y or Z, it is often misleading since that may not actually be the case when one looks under the hood, and I am not a legal mechanic, so thanks.
This helps a lot.
Your analysis of the Abrego Garcia case is the best and most inclusive and constructive that I have read. Hoping the best of success for Judge Xinis! Judge Steven Robinson, circuit court judge, State of Florida (retired).
Should you not also have bolded " For its part, the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps." That strikes me as an invitation to the DoJ to show itself as cooperative with/respectful of the courts, just as the court is invited to be respectful of foreign affairs authority placed in the President. Consider two possible sharings at today's hearing:
(1) The government has already communicated to the government in El Salvador its strong wish that Abrego Garcia be returned, and informed it that until that is done it will halt any further payments to it under its agreement respecting detainees
(2) The foreign affairs responsibility of the government precludes our sharing with the courts any steps we have taken to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return.
Were the administration the least bit attentive to the importance of retaining the Court's good will, it would file something like the first rejoinder.
Unfortunately I expect #2
There's a (spectacular) movie called "The Dancer Upstairs." An important part of the premise is that there's a revolution going on in some (unnamed and unspecified) Latin American country, but it's not an all out and declared revolution. It's a series of destructive acts intended to corrode the standing government, and install a character called "President Ezekiel."
In that same sense, the current US government is corroding the United States one piecemeal act after another. And it includes, as you quote, cracks like an expression of doubt that a US judge has any authority over the leader of some other country. The nexus is omitted: how did Garcia get to that other country? Doesn't the US Executive branch bear entire responsibility for that placement, and isn't it then responsible to be more lawful, and more likely correct, about such transfers? But the deck, as you partially imply, is stacked against the people of the United States, because "regularity" has been suspended, no longer exists, and its absence is supported by the current Legislative and Judicial branches.
FWIW the Dancer Upstairs is pretty clearly an allegory about Peru, Abimael Guzman, and the Shining Path.
Question: Assuming the guys jailed in El Salvador remain in jail, what will happen to them? Will they eventually be released and if so, when? As far as I know, none of them have been convicted of a crime under US or El Salvadorian law except maybe for entering the US without proper documents which is a misdemeanor under US law. Or will they remain in jail for the rest of their lives? Life imprisonment for failing to have the proper documents when a person enters the US seems like very cruel and unusual punishment to me.
The US has paid El Salvador $6 million to (illegally) detain the individuals we sent them. I find it hard to believe that this payment will be the only one demanded by El Salvador.
If/when the US stops paying, El Salvador will likely let whoever's still alive out of jail, and not stop them if/when they attempt to return to the US.
Trump and the rest of his clown car are too stupid to understand they've likely gotten themselves into a protection racket where they're the mark, not the people running the shakedown. The President of El Salvador, like everybody else, outsmarted them.
Maybe. But my question assumes these guys stay in El Salvador. What happens to them? Are they there for life or some term of years?
I think when eventually the US stops paying these prisoners will end up dead.
IMO, the biggest part of this crime is manny, if not most, of the people we sent to that horrible concentration camp,
don't have a gang affiliation at all. So they don't have people from their gang to protect them on the inside.
I don't think US lawyers and family members have heard from *any* of them since they were rounded up and put on an aircraft. In US prisons it's hard to prevent gang violence. In El Salvador it's much harder than that. Unless those deprtees have gang affiliates, friends or family in that prision to help them, they're already in a very unsafe situation. No amount of US $ can totally protect them in the first place. Prision gangs don't take "no" for an answer.
If nothing else, the court should hold regular short term status conferences to force the administration to repeatedly and publicly say or not say what it is or is not doing to effectuate the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia. Whatever they say or not say will be enlightening. Silence - by long intervals of not asking - is not an option.
This ruling is much better than the other one. The most important part of it is going to turn out to be the requirement that the Administration provide information on its efforts to facilitate. No, they aren't going to get away with a conclusory, false "there's nothing we can do" declaration. If they do that they're going to end up with people on the witness stand being questioned by the judge. And you have to lay a foundation for the state secrets privilege that simply can't be laid here.
What's actually going to happen is this one is going to work. The Administration will either in the short or long term realize they are boxed in by the requirement to provide real information, and will capitulate and get the guy out.
To speak in (some) defense of Justice Roberts et al., the administration's bad faith conduct also means that the Court can't be confident a direct order will be followed, and if Trump gets away with explicitly disregarding even a single order, that's presumably the ballgame. So part of the strategy here, it seems to me, is to bend over backwards for the administration to avoid any such confrontation or, at a minimum, build up sufficient track record to weather the inevitable political attacks that will follow.
I find it hard to imagine that the Trump administration will agree to follow the law in this case. Their statements and their use of CECOT prison in El Salvador make it perfectly clear that their intention is to evade oversight by the judicial branch.
The Supreme Court justices had better don their holsters. The ultimate showdown is coming soon. The outcome will reveal whether we are still living in a democracy or if we are now in a tyranny where even U.S. citizens can be "disappeared" to foreign prisons without trial or redress.
This is a very good point and seems quite consistent with how Roberts in particular has been behaving. Allowing the administration to continue at least claiming to respect the system does indeed help avoid or delay an explicit constitutional crisis.
Of course, however, it leaves us with an implicit one instead. If the court itself has to simply play the game to uphold the optics of the rule of law, then it has de facto already lost the power to check the executive branch. In effect, the court has averted an open constitutional crisis by giving up in advance. And maybe that really is their best move insofar as it keeps the door open for future administrations to return to baseline.
Worrisome nonetheless.
I appreciate the good faith and strategic thinking, but I wonder what you (since he’s not here to speak for himself) think Roberts’ endgame is. Is he trying (1) simply to avoid direct confrontation with the administration and so just protecting the courts from a fight the courts cannot win, (2) to protect the rule of law by essentially making it harder for the administration to « disobey » and a full blown constitutional crisis thus less likely, or (3) to stay out of the political arena by putting government action in a light (i.e. determining it be unconstitutional or illegal) that conjures a political response from citizens? In short, is he primarily protecting his turf, the administration, or (the semblance of) the rule of law ?
I don't think those are mutually exclusive, and in some ways they're actually complementary. Legally speaking, a novel 5-4 decision in favor of an unsympathetic litigant is just as binding as an unambiguous 9-0 decision with overwhelming public opinion behind it, but as a practical matter Trump is much more likely to win the former showdown than the latter if he wants to. So the calculation, I assume, is to protect the Court's reputation and relationship with the Administration by ducking the marginal fights (or throwing Trump the occasional bone, as they did here in Abrego Garcia), so that it's on the strongest possible footing if and when confrontation becomes unavoidable.
Right! The S Ct justices aren't perfect but they weren't born yesterday.
I am not a lawyer and I understand that wiggle room allowed with facilitate and effectuate. The justice dept with its statement drove a semi through it. Shame!!
The Supreme Court's claim that the scope of "effectuate" needs clarification seems like chickening out. For example, Merriam-Webster defines it as "to cause or bring about (something) : to put (something) into effect or operation ". Are there really any other meanings that could apply in this context?
Although we all hope that Mr. Garcia is still alive, none of us knows if he is still alive. The district court judges have, consistently, methodically and competently, already exposed the duplicity and prevarication of DOJ attorneys appearing before them. Carefully-worded expressions of the latter are contained in the Opinions of some of those judges. The statement put out last night by the DOJ tells just about all we need to know in order to predict what will happen in the proceedings now resumed before Judge Xinis: more duplicity and prevarication by DOJ but *now* emboldened by the "tone" of yesterday's Per Curiam Opinion. (I could use but won't use other descriptive words.) Many/most of us know the consequences of right and truth not mattering.
Nancy Chadwick
Your raising the question of whether he is still alive has caused me to reflect. One approach the administration could potentially take here is for the president to make a phone call requesting Mr Garcia's immediate execution in El Salvador. Following the Trump v USA ruling, the president would have at worst presumptive immunity for any such action and more importantly there would likely be no admissible evidence for such a call since official acts cannot be introduced as evidence. Combined with a statement from El Salvador simply claiming the Mr Garia (or anyone else) died of natural causes while in custody, this would pretty easily leave the administration in the clear with really no consequences that I can see.
Trump doesn't need to request the execution of Garcia.
The reason Garcia's family sent him to live with a family member in Maryland is because the gang Barrio 18 had threatend his life on several occasions, because Garcia refused to join the gang. The family first tried moving several times to get away from the gang. When that didn't work, they sent Garcia to the US.
Barrio 18 is one of the gangs that "run" the prision the US sent Garcia and other detainees. During Trump 1.0, Garcia's deportation was blocked because of the likelihood he would be killed if he was sent back to El Salvador. Well, now he's there, and Barrio 18 (and any other El Salvadorian gang) can easily get to him.
Good point. Reporting today seems to indicate that the administration says they don't know where Mr Garcia is, so you're quite right they probably don't even need to contemplate my scenario; just let the prison do whatever dirty work is involved.
I don't know if Trump/administration would be willing to gamble that its request for the murder of a detainee would remain 'secret.' And even if it did remain secret, can you imagine the public firestorm that would result from the 'the died of natural causes' "reason" for not having Mr. Garcia returned to the US?
I certainly hope you're right and I think *probably* you are. Far more likely, I would guess, is that they just make a bunch of claims about how they simply can't get him back and we never actually find out his fate--which is only a shade different in the end. Just really concerns me that these types of things are "in play" at this point. Truly never thought I would live to see the day.
What can the District Court judge do to minimize delaying actions by the Government, I presume the Court would try and get firm commitments from the Gov't on specific actions they would take to "effectuate" the Courts order and by when? But if compliance is inadequate does the District Court have any true power on it's own to drive compliance? To your point it sure does seem that Trump can stall this effort easily.
Shades of "with all deliberate speed", and odds are good that the effect will be the same, no speed at all.
I don’t see any realistic alternative to the incremental approach. The Court knows it ultimately has to rely on political suasion, so it needs to build its case carefully. But it doesn’t operate in a vacuum either. Trump is beset on several sides and the opposing forces draw strength from each other. The Court has come down firmly on the side of due process, at least rhetorically, and others can use that as a cudgel.
In physics we talk about equilibrium and the necessity to balance forces to achieve it. Each entity - Congress & the Courts - are doing what they see possible to counter any given expression of force from the Executive to keep our government in existence - equilibrium? - even if, especially in the moment, it doesn't look like it.
I too see "[no] realistic alternative to the incremental approach" of 'forces' from SCOTUS. This dynamic is at the core of our nature and the world as we understand it.
I hope DOJ’s statement cited above is mostly posturing.
I must say that the intrusion into the president’s role in foreign affairs of a directive to repatriate a wrongly deported person seems pretty small, and the corresponding deference due should also be small.
Does anybody know the legal ”brains” behind the Trump administration? They seem to be threading the needle in a way that infers strategy? And I can’t imagine Trump having the wherewithal. But an “evil” lawyer should stand out? Isn’t that the whole point of the rule of law? I understand that politico/lay people can pull the levers - but it should be hard for them to find a lawyer.
I'd also like to know who the 'legal brains' is/are.