Federal Appeals Court, in Opinion Written by Conservative Reagan-Appointee, Rips Trump a New One. Warns American Citizens Might Be Whisked Away Next.
A federal appeals court on Thursday excoriated the Trump administration for its conduct in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who was wrongly deported from Maryland to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
The administration 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,” wrote Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson in an opinion for a panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done,” he wrote. “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee who has been on the bench for 41 years, is one of the nation’s most prominent conservative appellate judges. His seven-page opinion is the latest — and most scorching — judicial rebuke of the Trump administration’s aggressive moves to sidestep court orders in high-profile immigration cases.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca4.178400/gov.uscourts.ca4.178400.8.0.pdf
The administration 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,” wrote Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson in an opinion for a panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done,” he wrote. “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee who has been on the bench for 41 years, is one of the nation’s most prominent conservative appellate judges. His seven-page opinion is the latest — and most scorching — judicial rebuke of the Trump administration’s aggressive moves to sidestep court orders in high-profile immigration cases.
"The Executive possesses enormous powers to prosecute and to deport, but with powers come restraints. 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."
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca4.178400/gov.uscourts.ca4.178400.8.0.pdf
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