BALTIMORE (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday threw out the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Maryland’s entire federal bench over an order by the chief judge that stopped the immediate deportation of migrants challenging their removals.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen granted a request by the judges to toss the case.
Cullen was nominated to the federal bench by Trump in 2020. He serves in the Western District of Virginia, but he was tapped to oversee the case because all 15 of Maryland’s federal judges are named as defendants, a highly unusual circumstance that reflects the Republican administration’s aggressive response to judges who slow or stop its policies.
Cullen expressed skepticism of the lawsuit during a hearing in August. He questioned why it was necessary for the Trump administration to sue all the judges as a means of challenging the order.
Signed by Chief Maryland District Judge George L. Russell III, the order prevents the Trump administration from immediately deporting any immigrants seeking review of their detention in Maryland district court. It blocks their removal until 4 p.m. on the second business day after their habeas corpus petition is filed.
The order says it aims to maintain existing conditions and the potential jurisdiction of the court, ensure immigrant petitioners are able to participate in court proceedings and access attorneys and give the government “fulsome opportunity to brief and present arguments in its defense.”
The Justice Department, which filed the suit in June, says the automatic pause violates a Supreme Court ruling and impedes the president’s authority to enforce immigration laws. The department has grown increasingly frustrated by rulings blocking Trump’s agenda, repeatedly accusing federal judges of improperly impeding his powers.
The lawsuit was an extraordinary legal maneuver, ratcheting up the administration’s fight with the federal judiciary.
Attorneys for the Maryland judges argued the lawsuit was intended to limit the power of the judiciary to review certain immigration proceedings while the Trump administration pursues a mass deportation agenda.
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“The executive branch seeks to bring suit in the name of the United States against a co-equal branch of government,” attorney Paul Clement said during the hearing. “There really is no precursor for this suit”
Clement is a prominent conservative lawyer who served as solicitor general under Republican President George W. Bush. He listed several other avenues the administration could have taken to challenge the order, such as filing an appeal in an individual habeas case.
Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Themins Hedges said the government was simply seeking relief from a legal roadblock preventing effective immigration enforcement.
“The United States is a plaintiff here because the United States is being harmed,” she said.
In an amended order pausing deportations, Russell said the court had received an influx of habeas petitions after hours that “resulted in hurried and frustrating hearings in that obtaining clear and concrete information about the location and status of the petitioners is elusive.” Habeas petitions allow people to challenge their detention by the government.
Attorneys for the Trump administration accused the Maryland judges of prioritizing a regular schedule, writing in court documents that “a sense of frustration and a desire for greater convenience do not give Defendants license to flout the law.”
Among the judges named in the lawsuit is Paula Xinis, who found the Trump administration in March illegally deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador — a case that quickly became a flashpoint in Trump’s immigration crackdown. Abrego Garcia was held in a notorious Salvadoran megaprison, where he claims to have been beaten and tortured.
The Trump administration later brought Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. and charged him with human smuggling in Tennessee, which his attorneys characterized as an attempt to justify his erroneous deportation. Xinis recently prohibited the administration from taking Abrego Garcia into immediate immigration custody if he’s released from jail pending trial.
Trump has railed against unfavorable judicial rulings, and in one case called for the impeachment of a federal judge in Washington who ordered planeloads of deported immigrants to be turned around. In July, the Justice Department filed a misconduct complaint against the judge.
