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Three Cases to Watch

Friday’s repatriation of the Venezuelan nationals that the Trump administration had consigned to the hellishness of El Salvador’s CECOT isn’t the end of the story.

While a host of political, legal, and humanitarian issues remain unresolved, I want to flag three cases to watch:

The ‘Cristian’ Case

In the case of “Cristian,” the pseudonymous Venezuelan man deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) in violation of an earlier court-approved settlement agreement, his lawyers went to court Friday once they heard that the detainees were being transferred to Venezuela and asked the judge to intervene. U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher ordered an immediate status update from the Trump administration. Later in the day, the administration filed an affidavit from a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official claiming the decision to release the detainees was entirely El Salvador’s “in the exercise of its sovereign authority” — clearly an effort to burnish the administration’s position that the detainees were under El Salvador’s control the entire time. The DHS official also stated:

A lot going on there, but what stands out is the stated ability of the Venezuelans to return to the U.S., at least for further court proceedings. In Cristian’s case, the administration was ordered weeks ago to “facilitate” his return to the United States, but it had stonewalled those efforts. In another filing in the case after Cristian was released from CECOT, the Trump administration said the State Department has pledged to help DHS in facilitating his return.

The original Alien Enemies Act Case

In the original Alien Enemies Act case, the Trump administration and plaintiffs agreed to postpone a key deadline in the appeal of the case to the D.C. Circuit in light of the repatriations to Venezuela.

The plaintiffs also asked U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to order the administration to provide an “immediate status update” on “whether it is prepared to bring the members of the class back to the United States for habeas proceedings.” Boasberg hasn’t issued such an order yet, and the administration hasn’t responded.

It’s not clear how the release of the detainees under the AEA will impact their habeas claims, what the process will look like, and what position the administration will take. A lot still to be worked out here.

The Case of Jordin Alexander Melgar-Salmeron

This is the least uncertain of the three cases I’ve highlighted. Melgar-Salmeron was removed to El Salvador in May in violation of an order by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which has ordered the government to facilitate his return. There’s no reason to think that Melgar-Salmeron, a Salvadoran national, would have been involved in the detainee transfer to Venezuela, but their release has implications for his case. The administration was already under order from the appeals court to provide weekly status updates beginning today. Stay tuned.

MUST READ

TPM’s Josh Kovensky spoke with the wife of Jesús Alberto Ríos Andrade, one of the Venezuelan nationals removed to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act who was reportedly freed Friday. Angie, a Trump supporter, recounts what the last few months have been like and her reaction to the news that the detainees were being released.

State Dept. Official Makes Stunning Admission

At the end of a two-week trial over whether the Trump administration targeted pro-Palestinian international students for their political views, a State Department officials confirmed that criticism of Israel was one of the considerations in revoking student visas. Taking the stand was John Armstrong, the senior bureau official in the Bureau of Consular Affairs.

“Pushed for examples of things he might consider in weighing whether to deny or revoke a student’s visa, Mr. Armstrong testified that calls for limiting military aid to Israel or ‘denouncing Zionism’ could all factor in his agency’s decisions,” the NYT reports.

Closing arguments in the trial are expected to begin today.

Trump Turns U.S. Into International Pariah

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio is yanking the visa of Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, his allies on the court, and their close family members in retaliation for the prosecution of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro for his attempted coup. Moraes is presiding over the trial of Bolsonaro.
• Rubio ordered the State Department to “stop commenting on the fairness, integrity and legitimacy of foreign elections, a major shift away from a decadeslong practice of promoting democratic elections abroad,” the WSJ reports.
• A federal judge in Maine ruled that President Trump’s executive order punishing people who work with the International Criminal Court likely violates the First Amendment.

Rule of Law Under Siege

• WaPo: “President Donald Trump and his appointees have been accused of flouting courts in a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling, a Washington Post analysis has found, suggesting widespread noncompliance with America’s legal system.”
• NYT: “Mr. Trump has fired or demoted more than 20 inspectors general or acting inspectors general since he took office six months ago, hobbling offices that for years have served as a check on waste, fraud and abuse.” 
• Politico: “Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called for several Obama administration officials to face criminal prosecution for participating in a ‘treasonous conspiracy’ surrounding the 2016 election … the latest example of the Trump administration targeting critics of the president.”

The Purges

• NYT: After months of denying it would do so, the Trump administration announced Friday it will eliminate the EPA’s scientific research arm and began firing hundreds of chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists.
• WaPo: The Trump administration’s purge of the Justice Department has involved the firing of at least 200 career employees in violation of civil service rules protecting federal workers from political retaliation, according to an advocacy group for former DOJ employees.
• Government Executive: The Trump administration is arguing in the case of fired U.S. pardon attorney Liz Oyer that a subset of federal workers are at-will employees who can be fired at any time for any reason.

Judge Orders RFE/RL Funding Restored

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth of DC on Friday ordered the Trump administration to restore funding for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, lambasting it for its “unprecedented” freezing of the congressionally appropriated funds and its “nonsensical” legal arguments.

Not Normal

NYT: “President Trump held a ceremonial swearing-in on Friday in the Oval Office for Billy Long, the new commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, in a sign of the unusually close relationship Mr. Trump has sought with the typically apolitical tax agency.”

Trump Sues WSJ for Defamation Over Epstein Connex

President Trump filed a federal defamation lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida against the WSJ, News Corp., Rupert Murdoch, Robert Thomson, and two WSJ reporters for its story from Thursday on the letter Trump allegedly penned to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday.

Meanwhile, in a bit of showmanship, the Trump DOJ asked the federal court in Manhattan to unseal the grand jury transcripts of the investigations into Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. As multiple legal experts have opined, the courts may not have a proper basis to make the secret grand jury proceedings public, and even if they do, the contents may be a relatively innocuous compared to the FBI investigative files.

Good Sleuthing

For the past several months, the small but persistent reporting team at Court Watch has been tracking a peculiar federal criminal case in Rhode Island that now turns out to be related to the earlier prosecution of two right-wing accelerationists for allegedly plotting to target the power grid in Baltimore in 2023. It’s a great bit of reporting that uncovers how the feds were able to to use participation in neo-Nazi group chats on Telegram to bring felon-in-possession charges against the defendant.

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A Friday afternoon in the summer seemed like a good time to step back and field reader questions, but as I sat down to begin writing this news reports started coming of a three-country prisoner exchange involving the detainees the Trump administration removed to CECOT. Under the reported arrangement, most or all of the deported Venezuelans in CECOT will be transferred to Venezuela, and the Venezuelan government will return some American political prisoners. The pace of news in the Trump era never slows.

But for now, let’s get to your questions:

QUESTION: What is the history of deportations to other countries than country of origin? What about to jails in other countries run by US or run by the other country?

I was in court last week across three different days covering the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, and I’ve learned quite a bit more about third country removals than I knew before. U.S. law does provide for third country removals, but the key point is that up to now they’ve been relatively rare. The number that came out in court last week and that I’ve seen confirmed elsewhere is that about 1.6% of deportations historically have been to third countries. That’s obviously a small proportion, but it’s also not nothing.

Where things get more nuanced are the circumstances in which third countries were used. My understanding is that prior to the second Trump administration, deportations to third countries where the deportee had no connection of any kind were much more rare. To your second question, deporting people to prisons in third countries (or to countries that are war zones) was unheard of until this year.

Another big issue here is what due process deportees are entitled to before they’re removed to a third country. The Supreme Court’s decision last month to stay a Massachusetts federal judge’s injunction blocking third country removals without notice and hearing cleared the way for the stalled removals to South Sudan. But it also muddied the waters considerably on what due process is required. We learned this week that a new Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy would allow removal to some third countries with as little as six hours notice and no further due process. We’ll probably get a clearer answer when and if the Massachusetts case makes it back to the high court on the merits, but it’s not looking good.

For those looking for more context, The New Yorker talked to Yale law professor Cristina Rodríguez this week about these issues.

QUESTION: Any procedural options for Senate Dems to grind the Bove nomination to a halt?

Not really. Because Senate rules are so byzantine, I feel like I should add a caveat that Democrats might in theory be able to add a few hours to the process, but I’m not aware of anything in the rules that would allow Democrats to stop the Bove confirmation process in its tracks.

QUESTION: Why hasn’t a senator put a hold on Bove’s nomination? Do holds no longer exist?

I suspect you’re remembering the old days, before the end of the filibuster for judicial nominations. Holds still exist, and they can slow down the process for judicial nominees, but they can’t stop them outright.

If you detect me being hedged in my answers, it’s because the parliamentary specifics are complicated and I don’t want to be imprecise. But I also don’t want to leave the impression that there’s some trickery or clever maneuver that is available to stop this. The battles over Senate rules and the nuclear option were fought a decade or so ago. We’re in a new era.

QUESTION: Why hasn’t anyone gone after Bondi et al. through complaints with the bar associations for violating legal ethics and bar codes?

I know there was a bar complaint against then-acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin in DC that was declined earlier this year, and I see that two Democratic House members this week sent a letter requesting a D.C. bar investigation of Martin. Beyond that, I’m not sure we would necessarily yet know about every pending bar complaint against Trump administration lawyers.

As for Bondi, some of the most egregious and corrupt things Bondi has done — like eroding the Justice Department’s independence from the White House — are not strictly illegal or necessarily violations of legal ethics standards. I mention only to note how limited of a tool bar complaints are.

Ethics rules should be enforced, like they were against some of the lawyers complicit in the 2020 Big Lie. But I think we also saw real limitations there that made them less than a magic bullet; namely, they’re slow. Doesn’t mean they should be ignored! Just wouldn’t pin my hopes to them.

QUESTION: Are there any more whispers in D.C. about Stephen Miller running the show in the White House? Will Congress clutch pearls or do something?

By all accounts, Stephen Miller is an exceptionally influential and powerful White House aide who has succeeded in channeling Donald Trump’s id into key policy areas like mass deportation. Morning Memo, I believe, was among the first to note that the Trump executive order on DOJ weaponization made Miller the White House point person. Miller also embodies Trump’s vindictive tendencies and seems to relish serving in an enforcer role. As for Congress, as long as both chambers are in GOP hands, I don’t see it targeting Miller for investigation.

QUESTION: I have two adult children with severe intellectual disabilities in a group home. Any idea how BBB Medicaid cuts will affect them?

I’m sorry you’re having to grapple with these kinds of questions. I was initially inclined not to try to answer this question because the issue is so important for you and for families like yours that it deserves an expert response. But I wanted other readers to see it, and what I can offer might help orient them.

My sense is that fight here now moves to the states, where the massive reduction in federal funding for Medicaid is blowing holes in their budgets. Each state is going to have to figure out how much of those holes they can fill with their own funding, and then make tough decisions about which benefits they prioritize. That makes it almost impossible to answer your question with any specificity now.

Medicaid recipients in blue states will probably, on balance, fare better than those in red states. But I don’t think there’s any doubt that benefits will be cut across the board, even in blue states. The funding cuts are just too big. But how it looks state to state will probably vary considerably.

QUESTION: My question is about whether Democrats taking over Congress in 2026 is really the best hope. Yes, they could block things, but they couldn’t repeal things or get new things done because of the veto power. At this rate, most of the damage will have been done before they are seated.

I would flip the question around and ask what’s the alternative? Is it not contesting the 2026 midterms? Is it giving up all hope? I agree that there’s no magic bullet. Democrats winning the House won’t solve every problem or stop every Trump transgression or instantly restore the rule of law. I subscribe to an “all of the above” approach. You do everything you can wherever you can to preserve democratic institutions and civil society capacity and then do the long, hard, often slow work of rebuilding what has been lost. Winning elections isn’t the only thing, but it’s an indispensable thing.

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