BALTIMOREThe Trump administration escalated a battle with the federal judiciary over President Donald Trump’s executive authority on Tuesday by suing all 15 district judges in Maryland over an order that prevented the swift deportation of migrants contesting their removals.
The extraordinary move reveals the administration’s resolve to control immigration enforcement and its mounting frustration with federal courts who have repeatedly rejected executive branch moves they believe to be illegal and without legal justification.
Professor Laurie Levenson of Loyola Law School described the Justice Department’s case as “extraordinary.” And it’s escalating DOJ’s effort to challenge federal judges.
In question is a May ruling signed by Chief Judge George L. Russell III that prohibits the administration from detaining any foreign nationals who submit documents to the Maryland district court asking for a review of their detention. The removal is prohibited by the order until 4 p.m. on the second business day following the filing of the habeas corpus petition.
The administration claims that the president’s power to enforce immigration laws is hampered by the automatic halt on removals, which violates a Supreme Court decision.
For weeks, the Republican administration has been embroiled in an increasingly intense battle with the federal court as a result of several legal challenges to the president’s attempts to implement important immigration and other policies. Judges have been accused by the Justice Department of improperly obstructing the president’s authority, and the department has become more upset by decisions that thwart the president’s agenda.
“President Trump s executive authority has been undermined since the first hours of his presidency by an endless barrage of injunctions designed to halt his agenda, Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement Wednesday. This pattern of judicial overreach threatens the democratic process and cannot continue because the American people elected President Trump to implement his policy agenda.
The Maryland district court’s spokesperson chose not to comment.
Trump has blasted negative court decisions and, in one instance, demanded the removal of a federal judge in Washington who ruled that planeloads of deported immigrants should be repatriated. That led to an extraordinary statement from Supreme Court Chief JusticeJohn Roberts, who said impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.
Paula Xinis, one of the judges listed in the complaint, has referred to the administration’s deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador as unlawful. Attorneys for Abrego Garciahave asked Xinisto impose fines against the administration for contempt, arguing that it ignoredcourt ordersfor weeks to return him to the U.S.
Russell signed the order, which states that its goals are to preserve current circumstances and the court’s potential jurisdiction, guarantee that immigrant petitioners can access lawyers and participate in court proceedings, and provide the government with ample opportunity to brief and argue its case.
In an amended order, 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.
The Trump administration has asked the Maryland judges to recuse themselves from the case. It wants a clerk to have a federal judge from another state hear it.
James Sample, a constitutional law professor at Hofstra University, described the lawsuit as further part of the erosion of legal norms by the administration. Normally when parties are on the losing side of an injunction, they appeal the order not sue the court or judges, he said.
On one hand, he said, the Justice Department has a point that injunctions should be considered extraordinary relief; it s unusual for them to be granted automatically in an entire class of cases. But, he added, it s the administration s own actions in repeatedly moving detainees to prevent them from obtaining writs of habeas corpus that prompted the court to issue the order.
The judges here didn t ask to be put in this unenviable position, Sample said. Faced with imperfect options, they have made an entirely reasonable, cautious choice to modestly check an executive branch that is determined to circumvent any semblance of impartial process.
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Associated Press reporters Gene Johnson in Seattle and Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.
