Judge Slaps Down Alien Enemies Act

Everyone in Washington knew that at some point over the weekend, President Felonious Punk was going to attempt invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in an attempt to forcibly deport gang members. The move was telegraphed so broadly that we even mentioned it in one of Friday’s stories. So, it’s no big surprise that lawsuits were already filed and shortly after the president signed the executive order invoking the act, a judge shut it down. Twice.

Hours before the White House published Trump’s proclamation, the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit accusing the White House of preparing to imminently deport five Venezuelan men under the Alien Enemies Act. The White House had shown its hand early enough in the week that being proactive against the act wasn’t a challenge.

The ACLU drew the right judge, though we’re not sure there could be a wrong one in this case. Chief Judge of the D.C. District Court James E. Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order preventing the administration from deporting the five Venezuelan men for at least 14 days. Victory for freedom, the rule of law, and the ACLU, right?

But then, apparently Judge Boasberg got to thinking about the case, perhaps over dinner or something, and he decided to amend his decision. Now, all Venezuelan citizens 14 years or older who are members of Tren de Aragua, currently in the country and are not naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are to remain in the United States for 14 days or until further order of the court.

“Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off, or is in the air, needs to be returned to the United States,” the judge said. “Those people need to be returned to the United States.”

Sure enough, the plane had already left and had to turn around.

Skye Perryman, the president of Democracy Forward, was looking forward to celebrating. He said in a statement. “But, tonight the rule of law prevailed. The government has been forced to turn planes around and our lawsuit — filed in the very early hours this morning — has resulted in broad relief.”

Hold up. Never underestimate the insane stupidity of the Department of Justice in its current form. They appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court. On the surface, such a move appears to be standard operating procedure. But once the details of the appeal were released, Constitutional attorneys all over the country were left doing a spit take into their champagne glasses.

Chris Geidner is the DOJ’s young and inexperienced attorney. This dude is so green that he calls himself ‘Law Dork.’ In any other timeline, one would justly wonder how such an inexperienced barrister managed to lead such an important case. This is the Punk timeline, though, where inexperience and ineptitude play through.

On the surface, his appeal seems pretty standard. Writing on social media, Geidner said, “DOJ asks the D.C. Circuit to ‘halt’ the district court in response to the TRO blocking the [Punk] administration from immediately deporting 5 men without any process.”

What’s wrong with that? The last three words: without any process. We could almost hear DC heads exploding all the way out here in Indiana.

 Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council and former immigration lawyer for Immigrant Justice Corps. said, “Holy crap. The DOJ is arguing that the President can unilaterally deport anyone he wants without ANY statutory authority, just on his inherent authority as President over national security. That is a terrifying claim to make and has never been recognized before in US history.”

He added, “While of course deporting citizens is unlawful, I see nothing specific in the argument that would purport to limit that claim to noncitizens, since it’s based on membership in a gang. But this is also a badly written brief with a stupid and unlawful argument at its core.”

“Badly written brief with a stupid and unlawful argument at its core.” Where exactly did ‘Law Dork’ obtain his Juris Doctorate, Punk University? He certainly didn’t graduate at the top of his class and, like most new members of the Punk administration, he doesn’t have a fucking clue what he’s doing. The average high school debate team could have done better.

Most importantly, the wording of the appeal demonstrates the purpose and philosophy of this administration. They’re looking for the ability to deport anyone who disagrees with them without due process. Yes, that’s unconstitutional. The Constitution is something this president thinks he can walk all over, though, and he is constantly searching for some remote and unused loophole that allows him to circumvent the law.

Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat wrote on social media, “Everyone who thought he was joking about being a dictator, are you waking up now?”

Note that the appeal was filed well outside the normal news cycle. Had the administration not telegraphed its intentions, it is quite possible that no one would have noticed the blatant attempt to circumvent the law. Even as it stands, most news outlets are only reporting that the appeal has been filed. We read it the instant we saw it hit last night and our social media alerts started popping soon afterward.

What we are witnessing is part of a continuing trend on the part of the administration to break the law and hope no one notices. This is no accident. Every step is planned. They’re doing their best to abolish the Constitution one small piece at a time.

This is why we need an organized resistance. If you missed our outline for creating such a resistance, now might be a good time to read it. We need good people to stand up, speak up, and act up in order to stop this dictatorial takeover in its tracks.