ICE Tried To Kidnap Kids Over Labor Day Weekend. Hero Judge Said Hell No.

[erronis]

https://www.wonkette.com/p/ice-tried-to-kidnap-kids-over-labor
Doktor Zoom

Judge Sparkle Sooknanan won't let Stephen Miller deport kids to Guatemala on her watch.

Excerpting just the end of this excellent piece that lays out the events very clearly.

. . .

Instead, as Flores testified, the judge’s vigilance worked. First the one plane turned back from the runway and parked, and finally, after two hours, the kids were finally allowed to get off the planes. By Monday morning, Sooknanan had confirmed that all the kids were back in the care of ORR.

And now the case will move forward; unfortunately, since Sooknanan was only on weekend duty, the case will now be handled by another judge who was assigned at random to the case, “Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee who has sometimes (but not always) been deferential to the administration’s sweeping claims of executive power.” A similar case in Illinois, handled with similar diligence over the weekend by Judge Georgia Alexakis, is also moving forward, though it’s against HHS, since the kids remained in ORR care without ICE trying to nab them and put them on planes in the middle of the night.

We’ll just go with Liz’s summation, because it’s damn good.

But whatever happens now, it won’t happen under cover of darkness. DHS will have to make its case in court that it is entitled to deport these children without process, against the wishes of their own parents, and in apparent contravention of TVPRA. And that is thanks to Judges Sooknanan and Alexakis, who picked up the phone in the middle of the night and issued emergency relief — and then kept on issuing it to ensure that the government didn’t ignore court orders the way it did in March.

And that, children, is our lesson here. Courts still matter. The rule of law still matters, and it very much mattered for the children who are still in the US, not Guatemala, as their asylum cases move forward. That’s not a trivial matter, it’s a win.

Even if the Supreme Court eventually decides to let Trump’s DHS get away with this, every check on President Stephen Miller’s power from lower courts slows the advance of the fascism machine, and builds a record that the complicit high court may still ultimately ignore — but at even greater cost to its credibility. Will that be enough to make John Roberts and the justices not named Alito or Thomas think twice before tearing down the law? Stay tuned and keep fighting.

[republianmushroom]

1. Thank you Judge Sooknanan.