Julie Le's comments are shocking, but they are a problem of the Trump admin’s own making. And it goes way beyond one lawyer new to the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's Office.
When people say “the system sucks,” they’re not wrong — it often feels like a tangle of bureaucracy, self‑interest, and inefficiency that leaves ordinary people behind.
But the problem isn’t just that the system is big — it’s that powerful actors use that complexity to dodge accountability and protect themselves while everyone else pays the price.
This never-ending avalanche of bad news - Epstein, ICE, Voting Etc. - is a demoralizing military tactic used to take down societies, and it is being fully deployed here.
President Obama: "You just have to flood a country's public square with enough raw sewage, you just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe. Once they lose trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, in the possibility of "truth", the games won."
Who is behind this? The 1%:
Here is well over a dozen Fox, CBS, ABC, & NBC local news stations all reading an identical script sent down from their singular overlord to crash & burn alternative media in order to enhance the Oligarchy’s Overwhelming threat to our democracy:
Ultimately we are not consuming news. We are consuming a product manufactured by the richest men in human history, and that product is designed to do one thing: keep us so busy fighting our neighbors that you never notice the chains being fastened around our wrists.
There are an abundance of other sources for reliable information.
Apnews and Reuters dot com are news services that objectively provide factual and up to date reporting to outlets that cannot afford or choose not to employ their own staff for such reporting.
As such, they have a standard of honesty to the facts that one does not find in the MSM of ABC, NBC and now, sadly, CBS.
TLDR, I stopped watching broadcast news years ago for several reasons.
Sir, if you haven’t please check out Chomsky’s ‘Manufactoring Consent’. Alas, it covers the corruption of AP amd Reuters decades ago. We live in a simulacra reality. Much more on how the fourth estates creates that here: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/counterfeit-continuity-in-our-fourth
At some point, the federal courts are going to need to start finding folks in the executive branch in contempt - even criminal contempt. Can you imagine what would happen to anyone else who is in such "non-compliance". Let Todd Blanche soend a night or two in Minnesota jail
Trump can just pardon people if it's criminal contempt. But it has been over a year of this you know what. It's time for an official finding of contempt. Not just a bunch of judges being contemptuous.
They don't even use that thin of a pretext anymore. Look at them funny and they'll smash your car window, drag you out, take you to Whipple, and send you to Texas before anyone even knows what happened. Citizen? They don't care. Have your documents? Hope you have copies because a) they don't care and b) you're probably not getting those documents back (or your phone... or a coat...). You're white? Lol it does not matter.
This is an armed, masked, unaccountable, untrained, unqualified band of roving mercenaries operating with no oversight or limit.
oh yes. Suspicious includes not just yelling things that hurt their widdle earsies, but also just sitting by the side of the road in the snow. It applies, obviously, to citizens. If you are AT a protest, that's grounds for arrest. The First Amendment is the new Home Depot parking lot
We have a Constitutional right to petition government for a redress of grievances. There are far too many barriers to “petition” the government. It is stacked against ordinary citizens, not limited to: by intimidating of the petitioner into delaying past the arbitrary dates set into the process; often by false instructions that deliberately lead to technical dismissal at court; politics of finding attorneys to help bring such cases (further under pressure now by Trump as they appease the fascist); “law enforcement” that lie about incidents on reports and to the court (often coordinated with other “officers” and through patterns and practices); abrogation or outright dismissal of the petitioner’s rights; delay of process that drags out so long that it becomes overwhelming to the already traumatized petitioner and their loved ones, overwhelming financially, re-injuring by repeatedly reliving the incident through multiple accounting, depositions, testimony, and justifications; and outright threat surviving in a hostile environment where “law enforcement” seeks to harass or harm further or nut jobs from the public attack and harass (which we know can be mortal danger). Having brought a successful case under ‘1983, I am hoping that the law will be overhauled to make the right of redress of grievances a reality instead of drawn out steeplechase with rare course completion.
“REDRESS: REMEDY OR SET RIGHT AN UNDESIRABLE OR UNFAIR SITUATION.”
many have noticed the Xitter ad looking for US attorneys. I can't recall the exact wording, but it is characterized as having "loyalty to trump" as a main criterion for hiring.
It seems to be much more that just loyalty to the president that is required. It is unquestioning obedience to what your superiors tell you to do, even if it requires violating pretty much every legal and constitutional precept you have ever known. Some current govt attorneys quit; others just openly yearn for sleep. Perhaps the best way of gathering recruits is to just have Eric open the Trump University School of Law and have trump bribe some accrediting agency to OK it.
This insanity was brought to all of us by SCOTUS. I place the blame with the SCOTUS cons, giving Trump et al the impression that they can do whatever they want and SCOTUS won't intervene.
Even now, with all of this going on, Roberts is more concerned about 'leaks' at SCOTUS than what's happening in the country.
So if this system sucks, we know who to blame. Yes, Trump. Yes, Noem. But ultimate, the SCOTUS cons.
There's no god damn way that your ICE or DHS lackey understands the nuances of what "admission" entails, considering that the word has at least SIX separate and not contextually-distinct definitions and none are necessarily intuitive to the layperson. Most immigration practitioners in fact don't. Those who specializes in removals and removal adjacent practices, of course, do, because we have to. At AILA's annual conferences for CLE credits a seminar is put on to explain just this one term of art and it usually runs a whole afternoon, and that's the intro version for the average practitioner. DHS' own counsel failed to take into account of the complexities and in turn, under DACA we got 16,000 or so otherwise ineligible DACA recipients green cards and in turn, citizenship. It arises out of Arabelly/Yerabelly (https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/eoir/legacy/2014/07/25/3748%20%28final%29.pdf) but the decision itself is oblique, although within 12 hours the listservs were buzzing about the possibility, but since it's pretty unethical to subject a client to a potential 10 year bar from entering the country it took months before someone volunteered to give it a shot. It's the only case where there was a legit loophole that was effectively created due to the government's own failure to understand binding decisions issued internally in an admin law setting. Immigration law isn't considered difficult and honestly, a lot of it isn't, but at the tip of the spear it's easily more complicated than defending complex murder allegations, speaking from experience.
The US Code takes precedence unless it's vague enough for the courts to, until Loper Bright, defer to agency interpretation with full deference. Loper Bright is now good law, Chevron is not, and it puzzles me as to why precedent set so recently doesn't seem to be brought up more considering that much of how DHS interprets the INA is only sustainable thanks to Chevron. Arbitrary and capricious might be a bar too high, but plenty of it are too nonsensical to or attenuated so that even though it's related to statute, the statute is language from 1882 in many cases. At that point "moral turpitude", one of the central rationale for removals today, is an euphemism for "miscegenation between Asian men and white women". It's not arbitrary, but it's utterly nonsensical. There are many reasons why it's hard to make a cogent defense on the government's part, but the key one is that without a blanket policy of deference, it is finally becoming evident that the lawyers who are still there are wholly unqualified to practice in such a specific, specialized, and inherently convoluted area of law, where "unlawful presence" and "illegal status" don't just mean different things but implicate almost opposite outcomes (one tolls for those out of status after the age of 18 with a myriad of carve-outs, one is a curable legal fiction for some but not all, had Texas v. US gone forward in the DAPA case it would've been evident that Texas and states briefed the wrong one) What is obvious is that for some reason ICE and really DHS (they share a general pool of attorneys) frequently relies on the rationale as if they get deference and that is confounding.
Someone needs to issue a memo that Stephen Miller, who skipped his LSATs and never had a legal education, never mind any experience actually practicing law (he runs a legal advocacy group or something). He claims to have missed his LSATs because he was planning a 9/11 memorial. I didn't miss my LSATs even though I had to check myself out of Mt. Auburn hospital against medical advice after suffering a grand mal the week before and walked 5 miles to BU to take it and did well enough to have some Jesuits pay for part of my education, so what? He isn't willing to jump through the hoops but still want the prize and his lack of understanding is blatant. It makes no sense that he who has no constitutionally prescribed authority is essentially the acting president. Why is anyone listening to his orders when he's neither formally empowered nor qualified to give them? Before I switched to removals I was in public defense when everyone in my office in the felony unit had 80 open cases at any given time and I didn't even realize that it was excessive until I had left. Federal judges are overwhelmingly ex-government lawyers - day one we were told at the PD's to not expect a political career - and some bias is built into the system of course, but why go out of one's way to help the unqualified attempt to defend the indefensible ordered by someone who is legally unable to give legal advice in any field? Kristie Noem not only isn't a lawyer, never went to law school, but didn't even get her BA in poli sci until 2012, and partly completely online. Why anyone would take her orders seriously except that it reinforcecs their personal animus is beyond me.
DHS has guidelines to help in this kind of situation, but they've been disregarded as far as I can tell. I have mirrored the FOIA dump that was obtained after 5 years of litigation here: https://archive.org/details/ICE-DHS-FOIA-IDP-2014-2021 and while most of it is redacted, plenty can be gleamed from what isn't. If the attorneys want sleep, they should quit instead of embarassing themselves. Miller, Noem, and really the entire administration is embarassing themnselves to those who understand the utter inanity of virtually all of their actions and pronouncements. The media also made plenty of nonsensical reportage errors but their job isn't to know the law, but lawyers and decisionmakers at DHS and ICE, it absolutely is, and they are flailing which in turn, killing people and depriving the rights of ordinary people like it's nobody's business. Ignorance of the law (outside of the tax context) isn't a defense and they don't deserve it. They're the clowns, and they can only bring a circus.
Such a fascinating point about Loper Bright! God, please write an article about how Loper Bright’s reduced deferral to exec agencies could be a sword not a shield as the conservative movement had hoped, especially on DHS issues. I would devour that.
Thank you, believe it or not even though the potential for a weakened if not entirely overruled Chevron effectively opens the door to neuter the worst parts of immigration enforcement and federal LE abuse is something I floated since learning about it in a very sparsely attended admin law course in law school nearly a decade and half ago, exactly one person have ever truly understood where I was coming from, a mentor figure who is a partner at an IP firm in Seattle who also advised me that "obviously you get it and I get it and I think it's valid but unless whoever's editing the law review you're submitting to gets it, leaving it in your backpocket indefinitely doesn't do anyone any good". It didn't help that I skipped law review since I treated law school like a vocational school and hey, I never had to actually interview for a job afterwards and that can't be an accident. In fact the door is open for a lot more of the egregious and outdated procedures that incidentally are also easily the most consequential for individual Americans. The DEA's interplay with the FDA in drug scheduling, which is a farcical process if one takes a real close look at all of the steps involved, is never questioned Aribtrary and capricious isn't arbitrary OR capricious, but to put something in Schedule I over 4 cases in Norway where a substance was connected to, but certainly did not cause, non-life-threatening injuries is the sort of common practice that, with Loper Bright, should be examined (or really much of the DEA's actions including literally laundering money for the cartels and losing a plane bought with taxpayer money to the cartels deserve a hard look since, well, the messaging involves an outside PR firm which no statute that's relevant actually authorized, but somehow silence becomes endorsement and the cartels now own a plane we all paid for).
I know that people seem to imagine that Chevron is what keeps the EPA or DOE going but really, it's not. Their mandates are clearer than the deliberately vague weasel words congress came up with to empower agency employees with guns and tactical armor and armored personnel carriers. The dropout rate of my admin law class was around 50% so ELI5 might be the real chore, but if actual people want to read it, well, Substacks is the sensible place to put it surely and I'll try to put out something in a few month. It won't be a law review piece (execept it'll be better than the notes) and will end up covering a real alphabet soup from BOP to ATF to possibly the GSA. I appreciate the encouragement, because nobody wants to be the one tilting at windmills. Cheers.
I definitely agree about the importance of explaining Chevron & Loper Bright to non-lawyer folks, especially here on Substack! I wrote about it for a blog for financial folks (since deference to DOL for a LOT of ERISA law is essential). However, if you want to try for a law review article, hit me up. I've published a few and was EIC of one of the subjournals in law school. Happy to help "conform" your writing to law review style.
Definitely appreciate the offer and while I lean towards just putting whatever I write here where it’ll be publicly accessible (and mirror a copy on an archiving site just in case) and comparatively easily found, generally I take the approach where chitchat about the law and legal issues are ultimately chitchat but anything I think is written seriously should at least be cited as to give the reader context and sources just as any well-drafted brief should. I may or may not still be scarred by my LRW professor and her red marker a decade and half later.
Although as more news and court filings are made available - I’m a long time active supporter of the Free Law Project and in turn, I’ve now spent more money grabbing filings off PACER while not practicing law than my spend while practicing. It feels like, whether intentional or not, as a matter of descriptive reckoning, DHS is operating so outside of any pre-existing conceptualization of what an admin agency is able to do, and receiving orders in a way that is no different than, frankly, what happens in mutinies and coups in history, that effectively Stephen Miller, without any formal authority contemplated by the founders, is ordering thousands of armed non-police agency employees with minimal training to ignore everything from Habeas to probable cause, and entirely disregarding court orders in a way that can only be described as having the power to suspend Habeas and so much of the Constitution that forget the president, he’s in charge. Black letter law no longer matters, never mind the CFR. Donald Trump is in effect providing cover for Miller, not directing Miller, except he doesn’t seem to recognize the usurpation of power. The actions in Minneapolis is in effect about immigration in pretext only and really, it’s about the assertion of control by an administrative agency in controlling, to quote Mao in one of his aphorisms that isn’t actually gibberish, “the barrel of the gun”. DHS is effectively an ongoing insurrection but one endorsed by an absent executive. Judicial deference doesn’t really matter when any ruling made is simply being ignored if it doesn’t favor the agency. It’s kind of the worst case scenario and the inability for the media to adequately report out the scale is playing down an issue that is very much a Constitutional crisis, and feels like one that I’m not qualified to address, and possibly nobody is really qualified to address.
I grew up just outside of LA and still have many friends living in the area. The harassment is pervasive enough that I run an unofficial safehouse a state away even though they are all citizens, although that shouldn’t matter. The person I’ve co-habited for 13 years, someone with mixed ethnic background, raised by the white side of her family in the south, and does not even speak Spanish feels not free to travel the six hours from her family’s property back to our house because she has a hispanic name and with a tan, would be profiled. ICE detaining US citizens falls into the crack that neither removal defenes attorneys nor criminal defense attorneys have experience handling because they are explicitly not given jurisdiction over US persons, but here we are and while I know how to get someone out of county jail or ICE detention in normal times, I literally don’t if you are a US citizen in ICE detention since their premise is that the US identity is fake and you’re a non-person for the time being.
I don’t think I’m even the first person to realize the implication here, but the analysis has been in bits and pieces. Perhaps it’s too much to bear but the democracy we can have if we keep it? That’s on pause effectively, just that most people don’t know it yet. How does one even begin to write about that?
Gee you know what would help out the judiciary (and thousands of people) here? A nationwide injunction against DHS breaking the constitution. So sad John Roberts and his right wing lunatics decided for their own partisan reasons to take away that tool.
Amazing reporting. Thank you. This fascist administrations corrupt immigration policies you outline explaining how we got here and what judges are facing sucks and now we know why. We are in this together. No Kings 3/28/26. Peace. Christopher and family
1. Part of this problem lies in the unwillingness of Courts to sanction the lawyers who draft the legal documents justifying the changes in interpretation or policy.
It's easy for some DC Trump mob lawyer to hallucinate an argument that has a success rate of 3%. Now, by failing to withdraw the document, the lawyers and their bosses are deliberately imposing enormous costs on the judicial system, and on their own employees, like Le.
The people responsible for this should be sanctioned, not the line lawyer.
2. Aside from the legalities, this policy is evil.
We lawyers don't do morals. But law isn't enough any more. We talk about "cruelty", but the reality is worse. These are the Adolf Eichmann's of the Trump Regime. They are the nameless bureaucrats who enforce evil and immoral policies. They embody the banality of evil.
The lawyers among them should read the reports of the Judges Trial at Nuremberg.
"As federal judges continue to take steps to get action, they will — if they don’t get results — eventually seek to figure out exactly where compliance is failing and why."
What are they waiting for??? How many times the Trump DOJ and DHS need to usurp the law and the Constitution before they are held to account???
Needless to say, I was very disappointed by Judge Schlitz's decision to give Todd Lyons, the Acting Director of ICE the choice to release the plaintiff in the case or defend ICE's actions during a contempt hearing.
This isn't a game. These are our rights guaranteed under the law and our Constitution. Trump, Noem and Lyons should all be held in contempt. Let the Extreme Court show their ugly faces to defend the unconstitutional immunity they granted Trump. Meanwhile, Noem and Lyons should face jail time (unless Trump issues them a pardon).
It is not so straightforward. What happens Schiltz issues the citation and the Exec Branch patently flouts the law again by simply ignoring it? The goal is not contempt but release of a wrongfully detained human. Schiltz's order achieved that goal precisely. Absent public support, the Judiciary has nothing, and the Executive has the military.
This is bureaucratic panic masquerading as moral outrage. Trump didn’t break the system—he exposed it. What Julie Le described wasn’t lawlessness; it was an administrative state choking on its own sabotage. Career officials, hostile judges, mass habeas mills, and NGOs have weaponized procedure to nullify immigration law voters demanded be enforced. When enforcement finally happens, the system screams. Of course it “sucks” for lawyers trained to obstruct, delay, and virtue-signal instead of execute policy. Trump is doing what presidents are elected to do: enforce statutes as written and secure the border. Chaos isn’t proof of failure—it’s proof of resistance. Drain-the-swamp work is ugly by definition.
"The Civil Rights Act of 1871 is a federal statute-numbered 42 U.S.C. § 1983—that allows people to sue the government for civil rights violations.
Lawyers sometimes refer to cases brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 as
"Section 1983" lawsuits."
"The Freedom of Speech, and of the Press, and the right of the People peaceably to assemble, and consult for their common good, and to apply to the Government for a redress of grievances, shall not be infringed."
I feel somewhat badly for Ms Le (whose parents/grandparents are probably immigrants); she obviously should not be in that position. Has the regime appealed any of these 300+ rulings that the detentions are illegal? Probably not, so they’re not legally bound circuit wide.
I have no sympathy for her at all. She can quit, which is more freedom than this administration is giving the people of Minnesota and law-abiding migrants.
She put herself in the position she is in. She had no business accepting the post. There have been resignations by experienced prosecutors for good reason. Any lawyer who knowingly files garbage in court should be sanctioned. Any lawyer who does not know they are filing garbage should be subject to disciplinary proceedings.
When people say “the system sucks,” they’re not wrong — it often feels like a tangle of bureaucracy, self‑interest, and inefficiency that leaves ordinary people behind.
But the problem isn’t just that the system is big — it’s that powerful actors use that complexity to dodge accountability and protect themselves while everyone else pays the price.
This never-ending avalanche of bad news - Epstein, ICE, Voting Etc. - is a demoralizing military tactic used to take down societies, and it is being fully deployed here.
President Obama: "You just have to flood a country's public square with enough raw sewage, you just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe. Once they lose trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, in the possibility of "truth", the games won."
Who is behind this? The 1%:
Here is well over a dozen Fox, CBS, ABC, & NBC local news stations all reading an identical script sent down from their singular overlord to crash & burn alternative media in order to enhance the Oligarchy’s Overwhelming threat to our democracy:
https://substack.com/@tritorch/note/c-208406729
Ultimately we are not consuming news. We are consuming a product manufactured by the richest men in human history, and that product is designed to do one thing: keep us so busy fighting our neighbors that you never notice the chains being fastened around our wrists.
Bingo.
There are an abundance of other sources for reliable information.
Apnews and Reuters dot com are news services that objectively provide factual and up to date reporting to outlets that cannot afford or choose not to employ their own staff for such reporting.
As such, they have a standard of honesty to the facts that one does not find in the MSM of ABC, NBC and now, sadly, CBS.
TLDR, I stopped watching broadcast news years ago for several reasons.
Sir, if you haven’t please check out Chomsky’s ‘Manufactoring Consent’. Alas, it covers the corruption of AP amd Reuters decades ago. We live in a simulacra reality. Much more on how the fourth estates creates that here: https://tritorch.substack.com/p/counterfeit-continuity-in-our-fourth
At some point, the federal courts are going to need to start finding folks in the executive branch in contempt - even criminal contempt. Can you imagine what would happen to anyone else who is in such "non-compliance". Let Todd Blanche soend a night or two in Minnesota jail
First step is to take the government lawyers violating court orders and sanction them. Lie to the court and repeat lying and get held in contempt.
Trump can just pardon people if it's criminal contempt. But it has been over a year of this you know what. It's time for an official finding of contempt. Not just a bunch of judges being contemptuous.
If the rule of law still exists, someone must be truly punished; otherwise, it's all empty talk.
I have to wonder whether ICE and CBP are trying to extend Kavanaugh Stops to now include anyone - not just Latinos - who “look” suspicious.
They don't even use that thin of a pretext anymore. Look at them funny and they'll smash your car window, drag you out, take you to Whipple, and send you to Texas before anyone even knows what happened. Citizen? They don't care. Have your documents? Hope you have copies because a) they don't care and b) you're probably not getting those documents back (or your phone... or a coat...). You're white? Lol it does not matter.
This is an armed, masked, unaccountable, untrained, unqualified band of roving mercenaries operating with no oversight or limit.
I keep calling them Tonton Macoute wannabes. (If you don't know what that means, by all means look it up.)
This isn't about "what happened," but rather, "I believe they've completely lost control, and you should be afraid too."
The personal militia of Donald J. Trump.
oh yes. Suspicious includes not just yelling things that hurt their widdle earsies, but also just sitting by the side of the road in the snow. It applies, obviously, to citizens. If you are AT a protest, that's grounds for arrest. The First Amendment is the new Home Depot parking lot
No assembly required.
We have a Constitutional right to petition government for a redress of grievances. There are far too many barriers to “petition” the government. It is stacked against ordinary citizens, not limited to: by intimidating of the petitioner into delaying past the arbitrary dates set into the process; often by false instructions that deliberately lead to technical dismissal at court; politics of finding attorneys to help bring such cases (further under pressure now by Trump as they appease the fascist); “law enforcement” that lie about incidents on reports and to the court (often coordinated with other “officers” and through patterns and practices); abrogation or outright dismissal of the petitioner’s rights; delay of process that drags out so long that it becomes overwhelming to the already traumatized petitioner and their loved ones, overwhelming financially, re-injuring by repeatedly reliving the incident through multiple accounting, depositions, testimony, and justifications; and outright threat surviving in a hostile environment where “law enforcement” seeks to harass or harm further or nut jobs from the public attack and harass (which we know can be mortal danger). Having brought a successful case under ‘1983, I am hoping that the law will be overhauled to make the right of redress of grievances a reality instead of drawn out steeplechase with rare course completion.
“REDRESS: REMEDY OR SET RIGHT AN UNDESIRABLE OR UNFAIR SITUATION.”
I still don’t understand the reasoning behind Kavanaugh’s decision. How can racial profiling be constitutional?
"Because we six said so. No reason or logic necessary."
many have noticed the Xitter ad looking for US attorneys. I can't recall the exact wording, but it is characterized as having "loyalty to trump" as a main criterion for hiring.
It seems to be much more that just loyalty to the president that is required. It is unquestioning obedience to what your superiors tell you to do, even if it requires violating pretty much every legal and constitutional precept you have ever known. Some current govt attorneys quit; others just openly yearn for sleep. Perhaps the best way of gathering recruits is to just have Eric open the Trump University School of Law and have trump bribe some accrediting agency to OK it.
This insanity was brought to all of us by SCOTUS. I place the blame with the SCOTUS cons, giving Trump et al the impression that they can do whatever they want and SCOTUS won't intervene.
Even now, with all of this going on, Roberts is more concerned about 'leaks' at SCOTUS than what's happening in the country.
So if this system sucks, we know who to blame. Yes, Trump. Yes, Noem. But ultimate, the SCOTUS cons.
Not the "impression." the confirmation. It's the fulfillment of a campaign to make "the Unitary Executive" base Constitutional jurisprudence.
https://substack.com/@whoviating/p-173161164
There's no god damn way that your ICE or DHS lackey understands the nuances of what "admission" entails, considering that the word has at least SIX separate and not contextually-distinct definitions and none are necessarily intuitive to the layperson. Most immigration practitioners in fact don't. Those who specializes in removals and removal adjacent practices, of course, do, because we have to. At AILA's annual conferences for CLE credits a seminar is put on to explain just this one term of art and it usually runs a whole afternoon, and that's the intro version for the average practitioner. DHS' own counsel failed to take into account of the complexities and in turn, under DACA we got 16,000 or so otherwise ineligible DACA recipients green cards and in turn, citizenship. It arises out of Arabelly/Yerabelly (https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/eoir/legacy/2014/07/25/3748%20%28final%29.pdf) but the decision itself is oblique, although within 12 hours the listservs were buzzing about the possibility, but since it's pretty unethical to subject a client to a potential 10 year bar from entering the country it took months before someone volunteered to give it a shot. It's the only case where there was a legit loophole that was effectively created due to the government's own failure to understand binding decisions issued internally in an admin law setting. Immigration law isn't considered difficult and honestly, a lot of it isn't, but at the tip of the spear it's easily more complicated than defending complex murder allegations, speaking from experience.
The US Code takes precedence unless it's vague enough for the courts to, until Loper Bright, defer to agency interpretation with full deference. Loper Bright is now good law, Chevron is not, and it puzzles me as to why precedent set so recently doesn't seem to be brought up more considering that much of how DHS interprets the INA is only sustainable thanks to Chevron. Arbitrary and capricious might be a bar too high, but plenty of it are too nonsensical to or attenuated so that even though it's related to statute, the statute is language from 1882 in many cases. At that point "moral turpitude", one of the central rationale for removals today, is an euphemism for "miscegenation between Asian men and white women". It's not arbitrary, but it's utterly nonsensical. There are many reasons why it's hard to make a cogent defense on the government's part, but the key one is that without a blanket policy of deference, it is finally becoming evident that the lawyers who are still there are wholly unqualified to practice in such a specific, specialized, and inherently convoluted area of law, where "unlawful presence" and "illegal status" don't just mean different things but implicate almost opposite outcomes (one tolls for those out of status after the age of 18 with a myriad of carve-outs, one is a curable legal fiction for some but not all, had Texas v. US gone forward in the DAPA case it would've been evident that Texas and states briefed the wrong one) What is obvious is that for some reason ICE and really DHS (they share a general pool of attorneys) frequently relies on the rationale as if they get deference and that is confounding.
Someone needs to issue a memo that Stephen Miller, who skipped his LSATs and never had a legal education, never mind any experience actually practicing law (he runs a legal advocacy group or something). He claims to have missed his LSATs because he was planning a 9/11 memorial. I didn't miss my LSATs even though I had to check myself out of Mt. Auburn hospital against medical advice after suffering a grand mal the week before and walked 5 miles to BU to take it and did well enough to have some Jesuits pay for part of my education, so what? He isn't willing to jump through the hoops but still want the prize and his lack of understanding is blatant. It makes no sense that he who has no constitutionally prescribed authority is essentially the acting president. Why is anyone listening to his orders when he's neither formally empowered nor qualified to give them? Before I switched to removals I was in public defense when everyone in my office in the felony unit had 80 open cases at any given time and I didn't even realize that it was excessive until I had left. Federal judges are overwhelmingly ex-government lawyers - day one we were told at the PD's to not expect a political career - and some bias is built into the system of course, but why go out of one's way to help the unqualified attempt to defend the indefensible ordered by someone who is legally unable to give legal advice in any field? Kristie Noem not only isn't a lawyer, never went to law school, but didn't even get her BA in poli sci until 2012, and partly completely online. Why anyone would take her orders seriously except that it reinforcecs their personal animus is beyond me.
DHS has guidelines to help in this kind of situation, but they've been disregarded as far as I can tell. I have mirrored the FOIA dump that was obtained after 5 years of litigation here: https://archive.org/details/ICE-DHS-FOIA-IDP-2014-2021 and while most of it is redacted, plenty can be gleamed from what isn't. If the attorneys want sleep, they should quit instead of embarassing themselves. Miller, Noem, and really the entire administration is embarassing themnselves to those who understand the utter inanity of virtually all of their actions and pronouncements. The media also made plenty of nonsensical reportage errors but their job isn't to know the law, but lawyers and decisionmakers at DHS and ICE, it absolutely is, and they are flailing which in turn, killing people and depriving the rights of ordinary people like it's nobody's business. Ignorance of the law (outside of the tax context) isn't a defense and they don't deserve it. They're the clowns, and they can only bring a circus.
Such a fascinating point about Loper Bright! God, please write an article about how Loper Bright’s reduced deferral to exec agencies could be a sword not a shield as the conservative movement had hoped, especially on DHS issues. I would devour that.
Thank you, believe it or not even though the potential for a weakened if not entirely overruled Chevron effectively opens the door to neuter the worst parts of immigration enforcement and federal LE abuse is something I floated since learning about it in a very sparsely attended admin law course in law school nearly a decade and half ago, exactly one person have ever truly understood where I was coming from, a mentor figure who is a partner at an IP firm in Seattle who also advised me that "obviously you get it and I get it and I think it's valid but unless whoever's editing the law review you're submitting to gets it, leaving it in your backpocket indefinitely doesn't do anyone any good". It didn't help that I skipped law review since I treated law school like a vocational school and hey, I never had to actually interview for a job afterwards and that can't be an accident. In fact the door is open for a lot more of the egregious and outdated procedures that incidentally are also easily the most consequential for individual Americans. The DEA's interplay with the FDA in drug scheduling, which is a farcical process if one takes a real close look at all of the steps involved, is never questioned Aribtrary and capricious isn't arbitrary OR capricious, but to put something in Schedule I over 4 cases in Norway where a substance was connected to, but certainly did not cause, non-life-threatening injuries is the sort of common practice that, with Loper Bright, should be examined (or really much of the DEA's actions including literally laundering money for the cartels and losing a plane bought with taxpayer money to the cartels deserve a hard look since, well, the messaging involves an outside PR firm which no statute that's relevant actually authorized, but somehow silence becomes endorsement and the cartels now own a plane we all paid for).
I know that people seem to imagine that Chevron is what keeps the EPA or DOE going but really, it's not. Their mandates are clearer than the deliberately vague weasel words congress came up with to empower agency employees with guns and tactical armor and armored personnel carriers. The dropout rate of my admin law class was around 50% so ELI5 might be the real chore, but if actual people want to read it, well, Substacks is the sensible place to put it surely and I'll try to put out something in a few month. It won't be a law review piece (execept it'll be better than the notes) and will end up covering a real alphabet soup from BOP to ATF to possibly the GSA. I appreciate the encouragement, because nobody wants to be the one tilting at windmills. Cheers.
I definitely agree about the importance of explaining Chevron & Loper Bright to non-lawyer folks, especially here on Substack! I wrote about it for a blog for financial folks (since deference to DOL for a LOT of ERISA law is essential). However, if you want to try for a law review article, hit me up. I've published a few and was EIC of one of the subjournals in law school. Happy to help "conform" your writing to law review style.
Definitely appreciate the offer and while I lean towards just putting whatever I write here where it’ll be publicly accessible (and mirror a copy on an archiving site just in case) and comparatively easily found, generally I take the approach where chitchat about the law and legal issues are ultimately chitchat but anything I think is written seriously should at least be cited as to give the reader context and sources just as any well-drafted brief should. I may or may not still be scarred by my LRW professor and her red marker a decade and half later.
Although as more news and court filings are made available - I’m a long time active supporter of the Free Law Project and in turn, I’ve now spent more money grabbing filings off PACER while not practicing law than my spend while practicing. It feels like, whether intentional or not, as a matter of descriptive reckoning, DHS is operating so outside of any pre-existing conceptualization of what an admin agency is able to do, and receiving orders in a way that is no different than, frankly, what happens in mutinies and coups in history, that effectively Stephen Miller, without any formal authority contemplated by the founders, is ordering thousands of armed non-police agency employees with minimal training to ignore everything from Habeas to probable cause, and entirely disregarding court orders in a way that can only be described as having the power to suspend Habeas and so much of the Constitution that forget the president, he’s in charge. Black letter law no longer matters, never mind the CFR. Donald Trump is in effect providing cover for Miller, not directing Miller, except he doesn’t seem to recognize the usurpation of power. The actions in Minneapolis is in effect about immigration in pretext only and really, it’s about the assertion of control by an administrative agency in controlling, to quote Mao in one of his aphorisms that isn’t actually gibberish, “the barrel of the gun”. DHS is effectively an ongoing insurrection but one endorsed by an absent executive. Judicial deference doesn’t really matter when any ruling made is simply being ignored if it doesn’t favor the agency. It’s kind of the worst case scenario and the inability for the media to adequately report out the scale is playing down an issue that is very much a Constitutional crisis, and feels like one that I’m not qualified to address, and possibly nobody is really qualified to address.
Somehow, the place that maintains a continuous list of reported actions that is actually rigorous in LA is part of the site I signed up for to get tips on new Mexican food places. They still do that but they are essentially a tacos-and-ICE-data site now. https://lataco.com/daily-memo-feb-6th-a-new-ca-state-bill-is-introduced-to-hold-private-detention-centers-accountable
I grew up just outside of LA and still have many friends living in the area. The harassment is pervasive enough that I run an unofficial safehouse a state away even though they are all citizens, although that shouldn’t matter. The person I’ve co-habited for 13 years, someone with mixed ethnic background, raised by the white side of her family in the south, and does not even speak Spanish feels not free to travel the six hours from her family’s property back to our house because she has a hispanic name and with a tan, would be profiled. ICE detaining US citizens falls into the crack that neither removal defenes attorneys nor criminal defense attorneys have experience handling because they are explicitly not given jurisdiction over US persons, but here we are and while I know how to get someone out of county jail or ICE detention in normal times, I literally don’t if you are a US citizen in ICE detention since their premise is that the US identity is fake and you’re a non-person for the time being.
I don’t think I’m even the first person to realize the implication here, but the analysis has been in bits and pieces. Perhaps it’s too much to bear but the democracy we can have if we keep it? That’s on pause effectively, just that most people don’t know it yet. How does one even begin to write about that?
Gee you know what would help out the judiciary (and thousands of people) here? A nationwide injunction against DHS breaking the constitution. So sad John Roberts and his right wing lunatics decided for their own partisan reasons to take away that tool.
Chris,
Amazing reporting. Thank you. This fascist administrations corrupt immigration policies you outline explaining how we got here and what judges are facing sucks and now we know why. We are in this together. No Kings 3/28/26. Peace. Christopher and family
1. Part of this problem lies in the unwillingness of Courts to sanction the lawyers who draft the legal documents justifying the changes in interpretation or policy.
It's easy for some DC Trump mob lawyer to hallucinate an argument that has a success rate of 3%. Now, by failing to withdraw the document, the lawyers and their bosses are deliberately imposing enormous costs on the judicial system, and on their own employees, like Le.
The people responsible for this should be sanctioned, not the line lawyer.
2. Aside from the legalities, this policy is evil.
We lawyers don't do morals. But law isn't enough any more. We talk about "cruelty", but the reality is worse. These are the Adolf Eichmann's of the Trump Regime. They are the nameless bureaucrats who enforce evil and immoral policies. They embody the banality of evil.
The lawyers among them should read the reports of the Judges Trial at Nuremberg.
"As federal judges continue to take steps to get action, they will — if they don’t get results — eventually seek to figure out exactly where compliance is failing and why."
What are they waiting for??? How many times the Trump DOJ and DHS need to usurp the law and the Constitution before they are held to account???
Needless to say, I was very disappointed by Judge Schlitz's decision to give Todd Lyons, the Acting Director of ICE the choice to release the plaintiff in the case or defend ICE's actions during a contempt hearing.
This isn't a game. These are our rights guaranteed under the law and our Constitution. Trump, Noem and Lyons should all be held in contempt. Let the Extreme Court show their ugly faces to defend the unconstitutional immunity they granted Trump. Meanwhile, Noem and Lyons should face jail time (unless Trump issues them a pardon).
It is not so straightforward. What happens Schiltz issues the citation and the Exec Branch patently flouts the law again by simply ignoring it? The goal is not contempt but release of a wrongfully detained human. Schiltz's order achieved that goal precisely. Absent public support, the Judiciary has nothing, and the Executive has the military.
This is bureaucratic panic masquerading as moral outrage. Trump didn’t break the system—he exposed it. What Julie Le described wasn’t lawlessness; it was an administrative state choking on its own sabotage. Career officials, hostile judges, mass habeas mills, and NGOs have weaponized procedure to nullify immigration law voters demanded be enforced. When enforcement finally happens, the system screams. Of course it “sucks” for lawyers trained to obstruct, delay, and virtue-signal instead of execute policy. Trump is doing what presidents are elected to do: enforce statutes as written and secure the border. Chaos isn’t proof of failure—it’s proof of resistance. Drain-the-swamp work is ugly by definition.
Rules are for losers, not heroic all-powerful winners like you and Trump.
"The Civil Rights Act of 1871 is a federal statute-numbered 42 U.S.C. § 1983—that allows people to sue the government for civil rights violations.
Lawyers sometimes refer to cases brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 as
"Section 1983" lawsuits."
"The Freedom of Speech, and of the Press, and the right of the People peaceably to assemble, and consult for their common good, and to apply to the Government for a redress of grievances, shall not be infringed."
I feel somewhat badly for Ms Le (whose parents/grandparents are probably immigrants); she obviously should not be in that position. Has the regime appealed any of these 300+ rulings that the detentions are illegal? Probably not, so they’re not legally bound circuit wide.
Don't feel bad for fascist enablers. She could quit, but she hasn't.
I have no sympathy for her at all. She can quit, which is more freedom than this administration is giving the people of Minnesota and law-abiding migrants.
She put herself in the position she is in. She had no business accepting the post. There have been resignations by experienced prosecutors for good reason. Any lawyer who knowingly files garbage in court should be sanctioned. Any lawyer who does not know they are filing garbage should be subject to disciplinary proceedings.