Trump administration challenges Maryland court’s immigration case pauses

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is suing all 15 judges on the Maryland federal bench, arguing the court’s policy of automatically pausing certain immigration cases that come before it is unlawful.

Attorneys for the Trump administration argued to the very court they are suing that the policy, imposed through an order the court issued in May, is an “egregious example of judicial overreach.”

“A sense of frustration and a desire for greater convenience do not give Defendants license to flout the law,” the attorneys wrote in a filing Tuesday. “Nor does their status within the judicial branch.” 

The Maryland court’s standing order requires clerks to immediately enter temporary administrative injunctions in cases brought by alleged illegal immigrants who are challenging their detention.

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The automatic injunctions in these cases, known as habeas corpus cases, temporarily bar the DHS from deporting or changing the legal status of the immigrant in question for two business days.

In its order, the court said it did this out of scheduling convenience to make sure the “status quo” is preserved when a case is filed. The order cited a higher volume than usual of cases involving detained immigrants who are attempting to prevent the government from keeping them detained or deporting them. 

“The recent influx of habeas petitions concerning alien detainees purportedly subject to improper and imminent removal from the United States that have been filed after normal court hours and on weekends and holidays has created scheduling difficulties and resulted in hurried and frustrating hearings in that obtaining clear and concrete information about the location and status of the petitioners is elusive,” the court order stated.

The Trump administration also asked the court in a follow-up motion that all the judges-turned-defendants recuse themselves from the case and bring in an outside judge to take over or transfer the case to a different court district.

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The unusual lawsuit comes as President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda encounters roadblocks involving individual immigrants using legal avenues afforded to them through U.S. immigration laws to raise challenges and appeals to their deportations.

In Maryland, Judge Paula Xinis, who is now one of the named defendants in the new case, ordered the Trump administration to return to the United States a Salvadoran national named Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador in March before he was returned months later to face trafficking charges.

The case became the first known instance of the Trump administration erroneously deporting an illegal immigrant before affording him legally-required due process.