Deportation Standoff

Plus: Rehiring federal workers, using Signal to orchestrate bombing the Houthis, and more...

Tren de Aragua (and other) deportations continue: Yesterday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg "ruled his temporary order will remain in effect, restricting new deportations [of accused Venezuelan gang members] until the men are given an opportunity to challenge their connection to the gang," reports Bloomberg.

Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act, which applies in situations when the country has "declared war" or is suffering an "invasion" or "predatory incursion" to deport suspected gang members.

But this specific swat-down by the courts is important because this is the judge for whom a spurned Trump had threatened impeachment last week ("HE DIDN'T WIN ANYTHING! I WON FOR MANY REASONS, IN AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE, BUT FIGHTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER ONE REASON FOR THIS HISTORIC VICTORY," wrote Trump), before being swiftly rebuked by Chief Justice John Roberts. "For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision," said Roberts. "The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."

The ruling by Boasberg states that each person being deported needs the opportunity to challenge the case against them. "Each vehemently denies being a member of Tren de Aragua," wrote Boasberg in his Monday ruling. "Several in fact claim that they fled Venezuela to escape the predations of the group, and they fear grave consequences if deported solely because of the Government's unchallenged labeling."

Indeed, new information has come to light suggesting that several deportees are not gang-affiliated at all:

All available evidence strongly suggests that at least one of the Venezuelans shipped to a monstrous prison in El Salvador for life has nothing to do with Tren De Aragua (though the refusal to allow hearings means all cases are uncertain).

Far worse, he was in the US legally: https://t.co/cTi6vgWn36

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 23, 2025

Rehiring federal workers? Yesterday, the Trump administration submitted an emergency application to the Supreme Court, asking it to block a California federal judge's ruling that would order the rehiring of some 16,000 fired federal government employees.

First, the administration spends some time complaining about all the injunctions and temporary restraining orders used against it."Whereas 'district courts issued 14 universal injunctions against the federal government through the first three years of President Biden's term,' they issued '15 universal injunctions (or temporary restraining orders) against the current Administration in February 2025 alone,'" according to Acting Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris.

Then, the administration gets to the actual meat of why the federal judge's ruling should not be permitted to stand: "The [California] court's extraordinary reinstatement order violates the separation of powers, arrogating to a single district court the executive branch's powers of personnel management on the flimsiest of grounds and the hastiest of timelines. That is no way to run a government. This Court should stop the ongoing assault on the constitutional structure before further damage is wrought."

"Each federal agency has the statutory authority to hire and fire its employees, even at scale, subject to certain safeguards," wrote Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California in his preliminary injunction. But the Office of Personnel Management does not have the authority to do mass hiring and firing of other agencies' employees, he argued. If Alsup's ruling stands, workers fired from the Pentagon, the Treasury, and the Agriculture, Energy, Veterans Affairs, and Interior departments would all have to be rehired.

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Scenes from New York: Link to the complaint here.

I think this is likely the most explosive detail in the entire complaint. Three minutes BEFORE the start of the Oct 7th attack (approximately midnight NY time), Columbia SJP activated its months-dormant Instagram account. https://t.co/saSAWBVFAd pic.twitter.com/KbdU2xR2yO

— daniela (@daniela__127) March 25, 2025

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QUICK HITS

• Senior officials in the Trump administration are reportedly using Signal to plan bombing campaigns on the Houthis…and accidentally adding the editor in chief of The Atlantic. Wild and weird story that raises questions about whether these officials are taking national security seriously enough.

pic.twitter.com/fBHDdpYI4I

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) March 24, 2025

• The Israeli military "is focused on killing senior Hamas administrators who were not previously viewed as high-priority targets, signaling to Hamas that Israel will not allow the group to retain control of Gaza," per The New York Times. Though a full truce looked possible earlier this winter, Hamas—which has "governed" the Gaza strip for nearly 20 years, if you want to call it that—wants to remain in power, and Israel has vowed not to let this happen.
• Highly recommend Ezra Klein's interview with one of my good friends, Santi Ruiz, for a levelheaded take on DOGE. An excerpt: "[Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought] says if you want to get into welfare, if you want to cut Social Security, if you want to tell people you're cutting Medicare and Medicaid, you have to start with the other stuff that doesn't seem as close to home, with the stuff that's, you know, the comic books in Peru about wokeness or whatever. You have to cut that stuff out first, and you have to hold up the bloody head before you have popular interest and willingness to go with you to the stuff that touches their families. I think that's definitely the view of some people in DOGE—that you have to zero out the stuff that isn't going to make a huge difference, because that's the only way popularly you'll be able to say: Look, we really mean it. We're not just taking you to the cleaners, we're making the government smaller. Period." (More Ruiz on DOGE here.)
• Pretty insane deportation incompetence and chaos:

Two female immigrant detainees say in court declarations they were sent by the U.S. to El Salvador but were later returned to the U.S. because the maximum security prison there, CECOT, does not detain women.

One of them was also rejected because she's Nicaraguan. pic.twitter.com/XQGZoijBpI

— Camilo Montoya-Galvez (@camiloreports) March 24, 2025

• "Abundance, the new book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, accomplishes something important by giving liberals something new to apologize for," write Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway for Bloomberg. "Liberals can apologize for their fetish for rules and procedure, which undermines the very values they espouse. Ground zero for their Abundance story is California, a state dominated by Democrats who talk a big game about their enlightened beliefs and yet have (we're told) created a non-egalitarian society, where the basic necessities of life are increasingly beyond the reach of most people." But Weisenthal and Alloway aren't totally convinced that the Klein/Thompson narrative is correct and point out a bunch of critical areas they miss or call incorrectly.
• In case you missed it: new Just Asking Questions with Kelsey Piper, the shockingly libertarian writer for Vox (seriously!):