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.
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
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.
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
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.”
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.”
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.
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.
"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.