- Matt Davis Reads the Newspaper So That You Don't Have To
- Posts
- Rising Chorus By Courts: Immigrants Have Rights
Rising Chorus By Courts: Immigrants Have Rights
Foiling Trump, Judges Back Due Process
Matt Davis
May 19, 2025
Morning! As usual, we’ll get started after the ads below. ⬇️
ADVERTISEMENTS FOLLOW
END OF ADVERTISEMENTS
I had a great time yesterday playing outdoor squash at a steel welding plant in Maspeth, Queens. Here’s me hitting with Tom, who also happens to be one of my fantastic paid subscribers! 👏🏻
Need to get that backhand prep higher, and he’s about to dominate from the ‘T’…but the court is cool, eh?
Now, today’s lead story is a news analysis by Alan Feuer and Abbie VanSickle who report that amazingly, American courts appear to be prepared to stand their ground over due process rights for immigrants, which I must say is a delight.
If there has been a common theme in the federal courts’ response to the fallout from President Trump’s aggressive deportation policies, it is that the White House cannot rush headlong into expelling people by sidestepping the fundamental principle of due process.
In case after case, a legal bottom line is emerging: Immigrants should at least be given the opportunity to challenge their deportations, especially as Trump officials have claimed novel and extraordinary powers to remove them.
Well, that’s a relief, I must say.
The “latest and clearest expression of that view” was from the Supreme Court on Friday, chiding the Trump administration for seeking to provide only a day’s warning to a group of Venezuelan immigrants in Texas it had been trying to deport under the expansive powers of an 18th-century wartime law. You may recall from yesterday’s newspaper that the use of that old war is bogus on its face because the supposed justification for its use is also completely made up.
“Notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal,” the justices wrote, “surely does not pass muster.”
Legal experts are glad the courts are supporting due process, but they’re also concerned that courts needed to do so in the first place.
“It’s great that courts are standing up for one of the most basic principles that underlie our constitutional order — that ‘persons’ (not ‘citizens’) are entitled to due process before being deprived of life, liberty, or property,” Michael Klarman, a professor at Harvard Law School, wrote in an email. “It would be even better if the administration would simply cease violating such principles.”
Trump and his top lieutenants have openly flouted the idea of due process for immigrants awaiting deportation over recent weeks, despite the Constitution’s clarity on the matter. “We have millions of people that have come in here illegally, and we can’t have a trial for every single person,” Mr. Trump said this month on CBS News.
🤦🏻♂️
Last week, Stephen Miller, the president’s chief domestic policy adviser, went further, saying that the administration was considering suspending the writ of habeas corpus — one of the Constitution’s most important protections against unlawful detention. In English, that means, again, that immigrants would lose the right to fight their detention in court. Miller’s justification is that under the constitution, you can suspend habeas corpus “at a time of invasion.”
🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
Before we go further can we just break and have a round of applause for the president’s son who is emerging as even worse than his father in his social media skills, if that’s possible:
Jill Biden has a PhD in education. She's not a medical doctor.
But you don't have to be a medical doctor to diagnose Donald Trump Jr.
Terminally stupid and a vile human being.
— PLGC (@PL67712441)
3:08 AM • May 19, 2025
What a class act, eh? Thank you. Okay.
Back to habeas corpus. In Latin, it means “show me the body,” apparently! It’s a way to get in front of a judge to determine whether one’s detention is lawfully. Previously, the Supreme Court has said immigrants challenging their detention must use habeas corpus to do so.
The 10 cases concerning the Alien Enemies Act, the 1798 wartime law being used by Mr. Miller and his pals, and “last invoked to intern and repatriate Japanese, Italian and German nationals during and after World War II,” have mostly found that Mr. Trump used the law illegally.
Judges have said that when you talk about an “invasion,” you need to be referring to an attack by “military forces.” You can’t just, you know, make it up or use it in a racist way.
“This decision correctly recognized that the president cannot simply declare there’s an invasion and invoke a wartime authority during peacetime,” an ACLU lawyer said. “As the court recognized, Congress never intended this law to be used in this manner.”
Obviously. Meanwhile all judges, even one who said the “invasion” law was being used legally, have said immigrants must have the ability to contest their deportations before they are removed.
Much of the rest of the story is a fairly in-depth reading of that ruling, by a 56-year-old Latino judge who Mr. Trump appointed. I bet the president regrets appointing him now, eh? Honestly it’s like an invasion, in this country, all these non-white judges with opinions about the law, to paraphrase Stephen Miller in a racist way.
Last week, the ACLU also asked a judge to order Mr. Trump to return the Venezuelans he’s deported to El Savlador to U.S. soil. The goal: To give the men the due process rights they would have received if they hadn’t been rushed out of the country. The Justice Department has also opposed that suit.
It would be such a pleasure to live in a country that didn’t describe immigrants in terms one usually reserves for cockroaches.
Thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to!
Say, is there a story that might cheer me up a bit?
Sure. Read about this haven for girls’ wrestling in the Bronx!
Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.
Standard disclaimer: I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each weekday morning at around 9 a.m. (depending on how long it takes me to read the newspaper). If you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later). If you subscribe to my Youtube channel it’ll also send you a notification when I’m “going live.”