Trump loses across courts in bruising week of immigration and legal setbacks

WASHINGTON— President Trump spent much of last week railing against the courts. The courts also spent this period ruling against him.

While Trump made history by becoming the first president to attend oral arguments on the Supreme Court, his agenda was being challenged in quieter courtrooms across the country as justices questioned his proposal to end birthright citizenship.

Difficulties with immigration and the White House ballroom project arose under his charge as January 6 approached.

“Stupid Judges and Judges will not make a great Country!” he wrote on Truth Social on Monday.

By Friday the judges had handed him loss after loss; Each found that the administration had pushed executive authority too far, too quickly.

Immigration decisions

He has faced some setbacks on immigration, a cornerstone of Trump’s policy platform.

On Monday, a federal judge in California took a step that would allow a class-action lawsuit challenging the administration’s handling of certain asylum claims. The case involves thousands of asylum seekers who made appointments with immigration officials using the Biden administration’s phone app called CBP One.

In many cases, migrants from around the world had waited months in Mexico to speak with border officials after making an appointment through the app.

These appointments were abruptly canceled after Trump took office. The judge approved asylum seekers as a class that could challenge the administration’s decision in court.

In a similar case, a federal judge in Boston ruled Tuesday that the administration unlawfully terminated the temporary legal status of some 900,000 immigrants who entered the country after using the phone app. Tens of thousands of people who were told by the administration to leave the United States “immediately” have since left or been deported.

The judge decided to return the legal status and work permits of those who were left to the administration.

“Today’s decision is a clear repudiation of an administration that is seeking to erase the legal status of hundreds of thousands of people with a single click,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a legal organization that represents immigrants.

sacred laws

Also Tuesday, a federal judge threw out a Justice Department lawsuit accusing Denver and Colorado of interfering with immigration enforcement and arguing that the city and state’s “sacred” laws violate the Constitution.

The ruling found that the federal government had not demonstrated that it could override state and local decisions about how to use its own resources. The judge said the Constitution does not allow Washington to take over local governments.

“Colorado needs to make a choice: How our law enforcement will operate in Colorado. The federal government can’t make that choice for us,” Colorado Lawyer. General Phil Weiser said.

citizenship by birth

The next day, Supreme Court justices were skeptical of Trump’s claim that birthright citizenship does not apply to babies born in the United States and to parents who are here illegally or temporarily.

Conservative and liberal justices questioned the arguments of Solicitor General John Sauer, who represented the administration, saying they relied on “some pretty obscure sources,” including precedents dating back to Roman law.

Trump, who was sitting just away from the hearing, left the Supreme Court building halfway through.

“We are the only Country in the world STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” he wrote shortly after leaving.

Austin Kocher, a Syracuse University professor who studies immigration practices, wrote on Substack Following the Supreme Court hearing that there is always a gap on immigration policy between what the administration says it will do and what the government can actually deliver. This gap was especially evident in the second Trump administration, he argued.

“The White House built its political identity around the promise of mass deportations, and the rhetoric was relentless: record arrests, expanded detention, military overflights, the administration’s show of enforcement,” Kocher said.

“But over the last few days,” he added, “developments on many fronts suggest that the operational underpinnings of the mass deportation campaign are more fragile than the administration would like to believe.”

disobeying judicial orders

In some cases, the Trump administration has been undeterred by judicial orders to halt certain practices. One March decision unsealed thursdayA federal judge found that Border Patrol agents continued to make illegal arrests without reasonable suspicion in California’s Central Valley.

Judge Jennifer Thurston in Fresno wrote that the government’s explanation for the arrests was “based on unsupported assumptions, intuition, and generalizations about the relationship between a person’s apparent status as a day laborer and his or her immigration status.”

White House ballroom

Trump started the week on March 29 by unveiling the 90,000-square-foot ballroom project and showing off the designs to reporters on Air Force One.

“I think this will be the largest ballroom anywhere in the world,” he said. Two days later, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered a temporary halt to construction.

Leon stated that the president was the “steward” of the White House, not the “owner,” and ruled that he could not undertake such a major structural change without express permission from Congress.

In response, Trump lashed out at Truth Social: “The Judge in the ballroom case said we had to get Congressional approval. HE IS WRONG! Under these circumstances, Congressional approval has never been given for anything large or small regarding construction at the White House.”

His administration filed a motion Friday to block the judge’s decision.

January 6 responsibility

That same day, a judge ruled that Trump remains personally liable in a civil lawsuit related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, allowing those claims to move forward.

It is among the most significant legal threats it faces.

Trump entered the presidency following a major Supreme Court victory that found that former presidents have criminal and civil immunity for official acts during their terms in office.

But on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Trump’s Jan. 6 speech, in which he instructed his supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell,” was a political act, not a presidential act, and thus was not protected by immunity.

“President Trump has not demonstrated that his speech could reasonably be understood to fall within the external ambit of Presidential duties. The content of the ellipse speech confirms that it is not covered by the immunity of official acts,” Mehta wrote.

The week ended with another defeat for Trump on Friday, when a federal judge blocked the administration from forcing universities to provide comprehensive data on applicants and students.

reading the lost

The streak had a clear cut, according to Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA who has closely followed the administration’s legal battles.

“It was a terrible week for Donald Trump,” he said. “The courts are not anti-Trump. In fact, he wins a lot. He is taking such an aggressive approach to policymaking that it runs afoul of existing precedents.”

Taken together, last week’s decisions signaled the courts’ insistence that the president is as responsible as anyone else for his actions and that states have constitutional powers that he alone cannot override.

“The Trump administration’s recent court losses show that there is still much that other branches of government – ​​in conjunction with civil society – can do to protect the rule of law and mitigate the harms of the administration’s destructive agenda,” said Monika Langarica, deputy legal director at the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.

“They are a reminder that the administration does not always have the final say regarding its unlawful and unconstitutional actions,” he added.