When words give out, so does judicial power

For about a week, I've been writing long threads on Mastodon, detailing and explaining significant developments in the various court cases involving Venezuelans the Trump regime has classified as alien enemies and is attempting to remove from the country, presumably to a hellish prison in El Salvador. Most courts involved have taken at least some steps to stop any such removals while the substantive issues are litigated. Even the Roberts Supreme Court issued an emergency order telling the executive branch not to remove Venezuelans held in the Northern District of Texas, because the district court there and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to act. This emergency order came on the heels of another opinion from the Roberts Court, the one where the justices held that Venezuelans detained per Trump's Alien Enemies Act (AEA) proclamation had to seek relief by filing habeas corpus petitions in the federal district court in the location where they are confined. The justices also held:

... AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs (emphasis added).

Recall the situation that prompted this decision. The Trump regime was flying people to prison in El Salvador, seemingly without giving them any notice, and in direct contradiction of a district court orders that they turn the planes around. That situation revealed the Trump regime's basic position regarding Venezuelan AEA detainees' constitutional rights to due process: that they have none. What has become abundantly clear since the Supreme Court ruled to the contrary is that the Trump executive has no intention of fulfilling the notice requirement the justices articulated.

Attorneys for Venezuelan detainees across the country have had to go to court upon receiving reports of imminent removals based on barebones forms written only in English and without mention of a right to seek habeas corpus. The attorneys have had to file additional motions for emergency temporary restraining orders against deporting their clients in these circumstances.

Today, from one of these cases, we learned that the Trump regime thinks that twelve hours of notice, based on a form written in a language the recipient may not know and which does not alert them of their right to contest their removal, counts as "notice ... within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs."

This is a travesty. It makes a mockery of the Supreme Court and the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of due process to all people before the government ends their life or their liberty. It is virtually impossible for most detainees to figure out their right to file a habeas petition, find an attorney to represent them, and get a court to act within twelve hours. It would be hard to achieve this in twelve days.

Clearly, the Trump regime aims to send as many people as it can to prison in El Salvador before the Supreme Court weighs in on the question of how much notice has to be given and what it has to include. Awful as this is, what's worse is the Trump regime's total and complete bad faith when it comes to complying with the law. No judicial system can reign in an executive that acts on the basis of absurd interpretations of what courts say. No amount of language, no amount of specification or definition can compete with an executive who will simply give each word, each sentence some crazy interpretation and then litigate his understanding to the highest possible court only to start the process all over again upon being told he is wrong.

Ultimately, the only remedy will be an end to the Trump regime, whether via impeachments of Trump and others in his Cabinet and/or defeats at the polls. We have to hope that members of Congress and rank and file voters come to understand how thoroughly lawless Trump and those in his service are.