DL Open Thread: Saturday, April 26, 2025

Trump Judge Draws Line At Deporting 2-Year-Old With ‘No Meaningful Process’.  We’re talking about a judge who frustrated Biden at every turn:

A federal judge is raising alarms that the Trump administration deported a two-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with “no meaningful process,” even as the child’s father was frantically petitioning the courts to keep her in the country.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, said the child — identified in court papers by the initials “V.M.L.” — appeared to have been released in Honduras earlier Friday, along with her Honduran-born mother and sister, who had been detained by immigration officials earlier in the week.

As a U.S. citizen, V.M.L. is likely to have the ability to return to the United States, setting her case apart from others that have drawn national attention in recent weeks, such as the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The Salvadoran native was deported to a prison in his home country in violation of a 2019 immigration court order. But the Louisiana case is the latest concern by the courts that the Trump administration’s rush to carry out deportations is violating due process rights — in this case, the rights of a U.S. citizen child.

Louisiana.  And a judge who calls the Gulf Of Mexico the ‘Gulf Of America’.  That’s a Trump judge right there.  I guess brazen criminality has its limits, even with Trump judges:

Doughty’s sharp criticism of the Trump administration is particularly notable because he issued a series of major decisions in favor of Trump and his allies in recent years, most notably backing conservatives in legal challenges to the Biden administration’s efforts to rein in what it claimed was misinformation on social media platforms about vaccines and certain politically charged topics.

Indeed, some conservatives considered Doughty so likely to be in their camp that they filed lawsuits in his judicial division in order to have a strong chance the cases would be assigned to him.

At least, the Louisiana judge is unlikely to be arrested.  This, right here, is some bullshit:

The federal government used brazen, heavy-handed tactics on Friday to arrest a Wisconsin state judge on obstruction charges related to an immigration case.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan received the distinction of being arrested at her courthouse. She does not appear to have been given the opportunity to surrender to law enforcement.

Instead, Trump administration officials immediately used the arrest to create a spectacle and broadcast to the country that state officials — including sitting judges — must cooperate with the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign or else face overbearing actions from federal law enforcement.

A U.S. Marshals Service spokesman told TPM that FBI agents arrested Dugan at around 8:30 a.m. Milwaukee time. They made the arrest, Marshals spokesman Brady McCarron told TPM, as she arrived for work on the state courthouse grounds, detaining her outside of the building.

Around half an hour after, FBI Director Kash Patel posted a tweet announcing the arrest.

“We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse,” he wrote. Patel deleted the tweet minutes later, though he would later repost it.

Ladeez And Gentlemen, Your FBI Director:

Check out his lapel pin.  That’s branding, right there.  Let’s call these ‘ICE Agents’ by their proper name: Storm-troopers.  Sometimes, the storm-trooping gets to be too much, even for this regime:

The US government is restoring the legal status of hundreds of international students after a wave of lawsuits challenged the abrupt suspension of their visas.

The sudden policy reversal was announced during a court hearing in Oakland, California, which brought together eight lawsuits filed by international students who argued that the federal government had terminated their right to remain in the US without due process. Attorneys in those cases had asked the court to issue a nationwide injunction covering all students whose official records granting them legal status were terminated since 1 March, and were at risk of deportation.

On Friday, assistant US attorney Elizabeth D Kurlan said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) was developing a new policy to govern how records are terminated on the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (Sevis), a federal database used to track international students’ immigration status. A similar announcement was made in a court in Washington.

In recent weeks, numerous students received notifications that their records were terminated with little explanation, jeopardizing their legal right to remain in the US and sparking outrage and confusion. Some said they had their status revoked for infractions as minor as a speeding ticket.  (Man, can you imagine if Kevin Hensley had been a foreign student?)

Trump To Arkansas: “Drown, Ya Losers!”.  I guess on some things, it’s best to take him at his word:

Last month, 14 tornadoes struck Arkansas over the course of two days, killing three people and leaving 32 more injured. The deadly outbreak damaged or destroyed 500 homes, cars and businesses, leaving behind more than $8.8 million of storm damage.

As is customary, Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders asked the federal government for help. After a major disaster, the usual procedure is for the federal government to issue a disaster declaration, setting the wheels in motion for the Federal Emergency Management Administration to step in with funds to help the state clean up.

But President Donald Trump said no. In a letter from April 11, the federal government said it had “determined that the damage from this event was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state, affected local governments, and voluntary agencies.”

Hucksterbee Sanders, who touted her special relationship with Trump in predicting swift response to her request, must have wondered, ‘I lied my ass off for years for this guy only to be treated like this?’

Ay-yep.  Sad.

Avelo Airlines:’You Supply The Chains And The Passengers, We Supply The Transportation’.  For a price, of course:

Protestors lined the sides of Route 13 outside the Wilmington Airport Thursday for a honk and wave rally, encouraging residents to boycott Avelo Airlines.

The outrage follows an April 7 announcement by the airline — which is Delaware’s only commercial carrier — that it entered a charter agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) to carry out deportation flights.

Avelo CEO Andrew Levy said in a statement that he understands this is a “sensitive and complicated topic,” but he sees the charter agreement as a way to provide more financial stability to the low-budget airline.

He really said that? Fuck him and the airline he runs.  BTW:

Backlash has ensued across the U.S. following the announcement, including a statement from the Association of Flight Attendants, urging the airline to reconsider.

A petition started by the New Haven Immigrants Coalition has received close to 35,000 signatures by individuals pledging to boycott the airline.

Yep, you can sign that petition.  I just did.

What do you want to talk about?