Ongoing battles over the legality of the Trump administration’s deportations of illegal immigrants have fostered conditions for a constitutional showdown questioning where judicial authority ends and the executive’s begins.
In Washington, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has suggested that in order for the administration to avoid being held in criminal contempt, it should reassert custody over at least some of those deported individuals. Meanwhile, Paula Xinis, a federal judge in Maryland, has similarly indicated that the administration could be held in contempt for not facilitating the return of one of those detainees, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to the United States.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court also intervened in a Texas case by temporarily halting President Donald Trump’s deportations of a group of individuals in the state under the Alien Enemies Act. The 18th-century law has been invoked only a handful of times in and around wartime.
