The Trump administration has been forced to get creative with its deportations, an unfortunate side effect of being sued by an army of left-wing Democrat-aligned groups who see them as the president removing future voters and congressional seats via the Census. This week, the administration executed a bold and strategic move to outmaneuver a federal judge attempting to block the deportation of certain undocumented immigrants.
According to Axios, the administration revealed Wednesday how it managed to comply with a federal restraining order while still carrying out deportations. U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy, a Biden appointee, had issued an order requiring that individuals with final removal orders be given the opportunity to argue that deportation to a third country could endanger their safety. However, the administration identified a loophole in the ruling: the judge’s order applied specifically to the Department of Homeland Security, not to other federal agencies.
Using that technicality, the administration proceeded with the deportations through alternative channels. Specifically, the administration sidestepped Murphy’s order by using the Department of Defense (DOD) to carry out deportations, effectively bypassing the court’s restrictions. In a Wednesday court filing, a DHS attorney argued that since the DOD is not a named defendant in the case, the deportations it conducted do not violate the judge’s ruling.
As Axios reported, the filing referenced two individuals who were deported to Mexico prior to Murphy’s order being issued. The document also included a sworn declaration from a DHS official, stating that all deportations carried out after the judge’s order involved first transferring individuals to Guantanamo Bay, from where they were flown to El Salvador on military aircraft. Axios noted that Murphy’s order initially posed a setback for the Trump administration, which has been working to deport certain criminal illegal immigrants to countries other than their country of origin, such as El Salvador. The administration is relying on the Alien Enemies Act to expedite these deportations.
Appointees to the federal bench take an oath to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law, not a particular political party, and while many of President Donald Trump’s judges and others appointed by Republican presidents have ruled against him in recent weeks, nearly all judges appointed by Democrats have struck down several of his executive actions — despite the fact that Joe Biden was allowed to autopen his way through his presidency with far fewer legal challenges. Democrat-induced lawfare is the real constitutional crisis, not anything Trump is doing, which is what a majority of voters want.
