When reading U.S. court opinions feels just like reading Holocaust literature

Earlier today, I read yesterday's opinion in Molina v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Judge Beryl Howell wrote in support of her decision to temporarily specifically require the Trump regime to obey immigration enforcement laws it has been explicitly and overtly violating in the District of Columbia. Before I say anything about the legal ins and outs, we must consider the facts that have given rise to the litigation. They are comparatively banal and they are horrific. As I read them, I realized I felt exactly as I did when I was kid reading The Diary of Anne Frank or Elie Weisel's Night – the exact same sense of growing horror that the conduct described happened and happened daily, as if it were normal.

We must keep attending to the particulars of what the Trump regime is doing to people. It is the only way we will remain galvanized in the face of the relentless, large-scale fascism. The details make the utter moral wrongness crystal clear.

Molina was brought by people arrested in the District by agents of the Department of Homeland Security, its subdivision Customs and Border Protection, and other federal agencies. The arrests were made pursuant to Trump's declaration of a "crime emergency" in the District. I strongly recommend you read the court's full description of what happened to the individual named plaintiffs, here at pages 9 -16. Here's my quite truncated summary:

• Each of the four people were going about everyday business in the District, going to work or running a work-related errand.
• Each was in the midst of pending immigration-related proceedings, seeking refuge in the United States.
• Each was stopped and physically grabbed by often-unidentified, masked people. Each was roughly handled and verbally abused.
• Each was hauled to a store parking lot, loaded into a van, and shipped to an ICE facility.
• Each had ties to the District. Two had children living there.

• In the ICE facility, each was held for more than twelve hours; some were held for close to twenty-four.
• Each was penned in a holding cell so crowded that people could not sit or lie down. Had there been room, they would have had to lie on the floor. Drinking water was available only from a single sink tap, and the water reportedly tasted like bleach. Very little food was provided during the twelve to twenty-three hours in the pen, typically one small burrito.
• There were no facilities for washing or even brushing teeth, so there was an overwhelming smell of body odor.

• Eventually, each was released from the ICE facility because there was no legal basis for the government to hold them.

It is unsurprising that there was no basis to hold any of these people. They had been arrested without a warrant and without probable cause for believing they were in the United States unlawfully.

By Congressionally enacted law, those enforcing immigration laws through arrests must obtain an administrative or judicial arrest warrant, which requires showing probable cause for believing the targeted person is in the country unlawfully or have probable cause to believe the targeted person is likely to escape law enforcement agents before a warrant can be gotten and probable cause to believe the targeted person is in the country unlawfully. People arrested as part of immigration law enforcement are not being arrested for violating any criminal law. Violations of immigration law are civil violations, like overstaying at a municipal parking meter or driving above the speed limit.

The official, publicly stated position and policy of the Trump regime is that it simply does not have to obey the statutes requiring warrants and probable cause. As Judge Howell wrote:

In September 25, 2025, DHS issued a public statement calling the allegations in this lawsuit "disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE" because "DHS law enforcement uses 'reasonable suspicion' to make arrests." Id., Ex. 17 (emphasis added). Obviously, DHS's quoted reference to "reasonable suspicion" is not the requisite "probable cause" standard required for civil immigration arrests. ... Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino, in a public statement, reiterated, "We need reasonable suspicion to make an immigration arrest. You notice I did not say probable cause, nor did I say I need a warrant.

Going into a bit more detail, the law regulating enforcement of immigration law requires that probable cause determinations be both individualized and particular. It is not sufficient to say that brown people or Spanish speaking people or people picking up work supplies at Home Depot are probably in the U.S. unlawfully and are likely to escape before a warrant can be gotten. (This should be obvious and intuitive to anybody familiar with due process, but may well not be to a judge like Justice Kavanaugh, who is happy to allow immigration law enforcement agents to stop people on grounds like these.)

Yesterday, Judge Howell found that the plaintiffs are likely to win on the merits of their claim that, due to a policy and practice of the Trump regime, they were arrested and held by agents with no warrant and no probable cause to believe they were in the U.S. unlawfully nor to believe they were likely to flee before warrants could be gotten. She also found that the plaintiffs are entitled to provisional class certification for the class of people similarly unlikely to be flight risks. The class certification means that the government is now generally prohibited from continuing its "arrest first, ask questions later" policy and practice in the District while the case proceeds.

To ensure compliance in the face of the Trump regime’s overt and explicit commitment to disregarding statutes applicable to it, Howell’s injunction requires from the regime's agents particularized, individualized narrative reporting of the probable cause for any and every warrantless arrest: “Requiring defendants to put pen to paper and explain who made each arrest and why constitutes the bare minimum to ensure defendants are compliant with the Constitution, the INA, and this Court's order, given the blatant misstatements about the INA's requirements for such arrests repeatedly espoused by DHS high-ranking officials.”

Judge Beryl Howell s an outstanding, experienced federal district court judge. She has written an exhaustive, detailed, and wholly supported opinion – eighty-eight pages long. We know, of course, her opinion will mean nothing to the Trump regime. But we know something even worse: if and when this case reaches the Roberts Court, there's little reason to think it will matter to the majority of the people on it. The horrific conduct of the Trump regime; the awfulness of the experiences of the people stopped, hauled away, and penned; the blatant illegality of the regime’s policy and practice: we cannot have any confidence that any of that will matter to the current highest federal body charged with adjudicating legal disputes.