How a Judge Tells a President to F**k Off

I read a lot of court documents, and I like to highlight some from time to time that really encapsulate the moment we find ourselves in. The latest from the 4th Circuit does it perfectly.

After Judge Xinis issued her amended order for the government to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia as instructed by a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling, Trump ran to the Appellate Court asking them to vacate her order.

Super left-wing Marxist Reagan appointee Judge Wilkinson of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals writes for the three-judge panel:

Upon review of the government’s motion, the court denies the motion for an emergency stay pending appeal and for a writ of mandamus. The relief the government is requesting is both extraordinary and premature. While we fully respect the Executive’s robust assertion of its Article II powers, we shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the Supreme Court’s recent decision.

I hope the word “premature” reverberates in Trump’s empty head for a while. I love how Judge Wilkinson gets in a line complimenting a woman judge from a lower court while simultaneously reminding the government that she’s following a Supreme Court Ruling. That’s gotta be a slap in the face to Donald, who hates women AND lower court judges, and micromanages everything down to the payoff of an adult film actress to interfere in an election.

Judge Wilkinson continues:

It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.

Then he astutely reminds us that it doesn’t matter whether someone spirited away in the dark of night to a black site is undocumented, or whether they’ve committed a million crimes - suffocating the right wing talking points that are so antithetical to the concept of freedom and rule of law that it boggles the mind:

The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order. Moreover, the government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was wrongly or “mistakenly” deported. Why then should it not make what was wrong, right?

He then schools the administration on their misreading of the Supreme Court decision, while also giving a bit of a grammar lesson:

The Supreme Court’s decision remains, as always, our guidepost. That decision rightly requires the lower federal courts to give “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.” The Supreme Court’s decision does not, however, allow the government to do essentially nothing. It requires the government “to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.” “Facilitate” is an active verb. It requires that steps be taken as the Supreme Court has made perfectly clear.

Followed by a vocabulary lesson:

“Facilitation” does not permit the admittedly erroneous deportation of an individual to the one country’s prisons that the withholding order forbids and, further, to do so in disregard of a court order that the government not so subtly spurns. “Facilitation” does not sanction the abrogation of habeas corpus through the transfer of custody to foreign 4 detention centers in the manner attempted here. Allowing all this would “facilitate” foreign detention more than it would domestic return. It would reduce the rule of law to lawlessness and tarnish the very values for which Americans of diverse views and persuasions have always stood.

Next up is a poetic civics lesson:

The Executive is inherently focused upon ends; the Judiciary much more so upon means. Ends are bestowed on the Executive by electoral outcomes. Means are entrusted to all of government, but most especially to the Judiciary by the Constitution itself.

Followed by a reminder of how the Constitution works, and the perils of ignoring it:

If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?∗ And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive’s obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” would lose its meaning.

Then we get a lesson in respect:

The basic differences between the branches mandate a serious effort at mutual respect. The respect that courts must accord the Executive must be reciprocated by the Executive’s respect for the courts. Too often today this has not been the case, as calls for impeachment of judges for decisions the Executive disfavors and exhortations to disregard court orders sadly illustrate.

Check out this writing:

Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around. The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions. The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.

Lastly, a conclusion with a dire warning:

It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.

And THAT is how a judge tells a president to f**k off.

Here’s a link to the opinion.

~AG

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III. (Photo via the University of Virginia.)