ICE Disappeared One of Matt's Clients

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:57 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1148. I'm Thomas Smith and I'm joined today by, spin the wheel, Matt Cameron. How are you doing?

0:01:07 Matt: Ooh, Thomas, it is, uh, it's not even, is it two and a half months into the Trump administration now? Is that what's happening?

0:01:12 Thomas: I don't know.

0:01:14 Matt: Is it still 2025?

0:01:16 Thomas: I, I, is it, no.

0:01:18 Matt: Man, a

0:01:20 Thomas: It's 1939, I don' know, I dunno history, but it's not a good time.

0:01:23 Matt: Little too close, a lot too close. Yeah.

0:01:26 Thomas: Yeah, it's Wednesday and our wild card for this week, our wild card Wednesday is we're doing not that. We're doing a normal episode. Well, we're doing kind of an emergency episode because of the news and because one, Heather Varanini got a new job.

0:01:39 Matt: Hey, congrats.

0:01:39 Thomas: Congratulations to Heather and giving her the time to adjust and hopefully having success at a new place, wishing her all the luck. And hopefully we'll have her back next week. And it will work out because there's so much to talk about here. There's a Supreme Court decision that, oh boy, I am extremely unhappy and worried about, but I can't wait to get a legal breakdown of from a lawyer I trust, Matt, because I don't know what to make of it.

0:02:02 Matt: I wish I could tell you you're wrong, but I'm not going to tell you that. Sorry.

0:02:04 Thomas: Oh, great. And there's this video that went viral just this morning as we're recording that I just really want to get your take on because it's, well, the title of it is essentially Attorney Protects Young Client from Attempted ICE Kidnapping. And I was very captured by this and it was also posted by listeners. And I know it's something, Matt, that you have a lot of experience with. But it's really nice to have you as one expert who can tell us exactly what's going on with this kind of thing from direct experience and not just as someone opining kind of out of out -of -nowhere kind of things. So it's very nice to be able to talk to you. It's really good to have your

0:02:38 Matt: It's more direct than I'd like these days, honestly. I'm going to have to tell about the last few minutes of my day before we started recording. Yeah, there is a lot going on. And I think that if I can take you through maybe for a few minutes, in case I've been working on today, I can give you an idea of what is happening in our system right now, because people have got to know. It's getting bad.

0:02:41 Thomas: Face on the screen. It's very good to be here. Yeah.

0:02:55 Thomas: Really worried. So that's our kind of emergency episode. We'll take our usual break and then get to it. Please support the show. patreon.com/law. If you want to keep making it happen, keep bringing you this this kind of thing, these breakdowns and you avoid the ads. patreon.com/law, all right, we'll take our break.

0:03:14 Matt: So yeah, I want to tell you a little bit about my day and actually my last 24 hours or so. The Supreme Court decision we're going to talk about has really brought me down. I'm going to be honest with you. I've been having a rough 24 hours oder so. But kind of a precursor to that and where I think a lot of this stuff is going, I'm just going to tell you about one detained case that we have out of several in my office right now. And I'm going to as vague as possible about the details for obvious reasons. I want want to be careful not to be that podcaster who's telling you all about his personal cases. But I do think that the only way to understand is anecdotal right now, because there is so much happening all at the same time. And I know there's a lot to keep track of, but I think that maybe hearing just this one experience with one client will give people an idea of what it is like to deal with ICE right now. So I have been representing for the last couple of weeks, some workers out in Western Massachusetts who were picked up. I'm not going to get too specific about them, but they're Central American men. They all have good ties to the community and And they have family, a few of them here, but they're all good workers with good records and no real issues with anybody. They were picked up while ICE was looking for someone else, as often happens now in collateral raids. They've been in custody since March 20th, I believe.

0:04:21 Thomas: March 20th. Wow.

0:04:22 Matt: And that's not unusual right now. Now, usually when you're picked up by ICE and detained, you are given the opportunity to have a bond hearing within about 10 days. That's been the rule, but that is not what's happening right now so long. Absolutely. Especially when you know you're going to get bond. And I want to point out that ICE has the right to set its own bonds. So when they arrest you, they can actually process you out with their own bond and you can just pay it on the spot and they can let you out. And in times past, in a case like this, when somebody doesn't have a criminal record, has community ties, and they know they're going to come back to court, they would just do that. Maybe set a bond higher than you might want to pay, but that way you pay $5 ,000 instead of waiting around for a judge to give you a $2 ,000 bond.

0:04:31 Thomas: That's still so long. Yeah. I would think even they don't like they, I know, correct me if I'm wrong. Aren't the facilities woefully inadequate? Do they get something out of like packing people into places that are inadequate? And I guess I'm asking like, what's in it for anybody for that?

0:05:10 Matt: Well, politically right now, ICE does not want to be seen giving anyone a break. So their official line is they're gonna leave everything thing up to the judge, because the immigration judge has the ultimate authority to set the terms of release. And so their position is, we take it to the Judge, let them decide.

0:05:23 Thomas: The judge can see you in three to five business months.

0:05:26 Matt: Yeah, pretty much, pretty much.

0:05:28 Thomas: That's convenient

0:05:28 Matt: So except it's worse than ever now. And here in New England, we only have a couple of facilities. They've just started using one up in Berlin, New Hampshire, which is about three hours north of here. But typically, we've been using the Stratford County Jail up in Dover, New Hampshire and the Plymouth County Jails in Plymoth, Massachusetts, the home of Plymath Rock, very strange place to go around Thanksgiving when you're going to visit somebody in ICE custody. Massachusetts canceled its contracts with other ICE facilities for the most part. So there's very limited bed space. And typically, for most of the time I've been doing this, when they arrest you in a jurisdiction, they keep you in that jurisdiction, and you have the right to see an immigration judge in that restriction. I just want to remind everybody, especially if you're just kind of rejoining us here, immigration court is not a judicial court. It's an Article I court created by Congress, and it does not have constitutional rights. So, there's no speedy trial, for example, when you're being held in immigration custody. And when you see an immigration judge, what you're seeing is a Department of Justice lawyer who's been appointed by the Attorney General to do this. So not confirmed by Congress. So just to remind everybody of the system we're talking about here. And for the most part, I will say that our local Massachusetts immigration judges are pretty great. I have nothing bad to say. I certainly wouldn't say it here if I did.

0:06:31 Matt: So this one individual I'm going to talk to you about, I'm just going to call him Jose just for easy reference. That's not his name. This man, again, has no criminal record other than having driven without a license at some point, as is pretty pretty common if you've been here for a while. Everybody in Massachusetts cannot get driver's licenses, but that wasn't always the case. And people got to get around. And that's barely even a criminal offense. And it certainly doesn't suggest that you present a danger to the public. So when an immigration judge is reviewing bond, they have to decide first if you present a danger or not. And if they find that they can't go any further, that's the end of the analysis, and they will keep you in custody. But if they do find that you're not a danger, they'll go on to look at community ties and your likelihood of returning. So we're scheduled for a bond hearing on Monday morning. That's Monday the 7th. And and it is now the 8th that we're recording this, and I'm prepared to go. It's 8 .30 in the morning, we're going to get on video, and we're gonna talk to a judge, and there's gonna be, you know, probably a dozen or 20 other cases on that we just have to wait through, and when we get to our turn, they go facility by facility, and the judge calls them up on video and they talk to each person, and we have a conversation about bond. And so I log in, and this session just isn't happening.

0:07:30 Matt: And I wait around, and I wait around. And I call the clerk's office, and they don't have have my client on for this bond hearing. They don't have them on the docket at all. And I log into my account and lawyers have an online account with the immigration court where we can upload and manage our cases. And my client's case has disappeared.

0:07:40 Thomas: What

0:07:49 Matt: It is no longer there. It has vanished. I've never had this happen before.

0:07:48 Thomas: Wow wouldn't you need to get notified or something

0:07:55 Matt: Yeah. And even if they closed it out, there would still be a record that it was filed, right? So I had been wondering because I'd uploaded a package of evidence on Friday morning and I'd noticed when I logged in that that was still an upload status. It hadn't been accepted by the clerk's office because they actually have to click it through and put it into the record. So at 2 .37 p .m. on Monday, I received an email saying that the package that I'd filed on Friday morning that I had uploaded had been received by the clerks office, but it was under case N slash A. So my client's name, usually in the email, it would give your client's name and the last three digits of his alien number, which is the identification number everyone has. So it was the last two digits of a number and N slash a was saying it was accepted into this record. I logged in. The case is still missing. It's not there. There. So I started making some calls and I've made some more calls today, and I'm going to try to tell you what I know, which isn't very much. And I want you to remember everybody, as you're listening to this, that we were talking about a human being. We're talking about person,

0:07:58 Thomas: Like yeah what hmm huh yeah it's not like uh just a file just a computer file

0:08:51 Matt: Right? Yeah. It's not just a file that's been deleted. It is a person who has been deleted from the system. And if I had ordered a pair of shoes from zappos .com, I think I'd get much better customer service on where those shoes are right now, if they'd been lost somewhere. I mean, that's the reality of it. I can imagine people get entitled and yell at customer service people people at Zappos all the time, right?

0:09:09 Thomas: Oh yeah probably more than in this situation

0:09:12 Matt: Yeah, right. Because I'm a professional. I'm expected not to say what I'm feeling right now. So I can tell you a little bit about what I am feeling right now. Yeah, I do it all the time. I think everyone probably knows by now, I don't raise my voice. I don t get upset. I have a pretty even keel. I have dangerously low blood

0:09:18 Thomas: Somehow, well, that's impossible. I don't know how you do that

0:09:28 Matt: Pressure. But talking to ICE officers, I get a little passive aggressive, just a little. Because the level of indifference that you start to experience and you start to normalize and absorb from these people who just, you know, you're telling them, this man's family would like to know where he is. Oh, well, this is all I got for you.

0:09:28 Thomas: Job wow

0:09:45 Matt: And here's the thing, the clerk's office at the Children's Immigration Court, and shout out to the clerk offices everywhere, but especially to Boston and Chelmsford clerk's offices at immigration courts, they do not get enough credit or enough love. And I really appreciate the time that they take sometimes to try to see these things through. They care a lot more than ICE does about this. And so the clerk told me that day that they had a note there that the case was is being transferred to the jurisdiction of Albuquerque, New Mexico. And that is several time zones away.

0:10:11 Thomas: To be clear that's yeah you don't live there right I feel like it'd be bad friend if I was like Like, yeah, that's where you live, right?

0:10:14 Matt: Nowhere near there. I'm still in Boston. My client was...

0:10:19 Thomas: Sounds familiar. That's where the turtle... Never mind. Call back to the turtle after. It's not from there.

0:10:27 Matt: I've never been to Albuquerque. As far as I know, it's where Breaking Bad is set. That's all I know about it. So I'm obviously confused because my client had a bond hearing scheduled because he He was in Plymouth, and an immigration judge has jurisdiction so long as he's in the area. Now, you only have jurisdiction for bond under Tercero II circumstances. It's either that you're being held in the jurisdiction of the court or that the notice to appear, which is the charging document that initiates deportation proceedings, has been filed in that court. And here's a game that ICE is playing and has been playing for a while. They're withholding filing that charging document, and they're basically keeping people out of immigration court. So when you file a bond case, you're creating essentially a custody review case, but it's It's not the same as your actual deportation proceedings, if that makes sense. It's a separate record.

0:11:09 Thomas: I don't know if that makes sense. I don' t know. So they're playing shenanigans. And what's the purpose of the shenanigan? So that you can't have your lawyer present or something? Yeah, it's just describing things. Okay. What?

0:11:18 Matt: I'm going to be as cynical. It's not even cynical at this point. I think I'm just saying what it is. I think they're just trying to keep you from having your bond hearing, and they're trying to make it as uncomfortable and inconvenient as possible. And I'm gonna tell you as much as I know as of right now, which, just to be clear, is about 5 p.m. on the 8th of April. So what I know is after calling around is that it seems that there's some kind of thing happening now. And I was told by the clerk that this has happened several times recently, in which ICE now has some kind of capacity where they can change the location of a case and the case will disappear from the immigration court system. This is deeply concerning because DHS and the immigration court are in the same branch of government, but they are not the same agency. Immigration court is run by the Department of Justice. So I am taking steps right now. I'm writing several emails to different places, including the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge, because I've been told that this is something that's been happening, and I'd like to find out why, how it is that we're disappearing people and deleting their bond cases. And I can't even get anyone to confirm what I've been told, which is that my client is in New Mexico or may be, and we haven't heard from him. And we haven' heard from him. We haven't even heard from them. And so, I'm going to have real concerns at this point, because in his arrest report, they not only got his country of origin wrong, completely wrong, they said that they don't know when he came to the US. And that's important because we've talked about expedited removal before. Now, I'm sure that he must have told them when they asked. He's an honest guy. And he came a while ago. He has been here since at least 2018. But in the report, it says he came unknown place, unknown time, and they don't know when. Now that's important because the new expedited approval standards are that if you can't prove that you've been here for more than two years, they can just throw you out of the country without a hearing, without seeing a judge. And I'm very concerned that might be what is happening. But I don't even know what jurisdiction to file something in if I'm trying to file habeas. I don't know where to file a bond request. I called several different places with ICE. I called the field office in El Paso, which has jurisdiction over Albuquerque. And even though I have what's called a G-28, which is my representation form, is on file with ICE right now, I was told that there are things in there I can't be told.

0:13:24 Matt: And then I was transferred from the El Paso field office to some sort of central ICE information thing. And all they were able to do was give me the information from the ICE detainee locator, which was public. And that still says that he is in Plymouth, Massachusetts. And I know that's not true. The deal with the detainee locator is they don't update it for about 24 to 48 hours or more, it seems like in some cases now. So again, someone who is entitled to a bond hearing has been denied that hearing, and we don't know where he is. And what's incredible to me is when I called the Burlington field office, which is responsible for New England, Burlington, Massachusetts, the best place to find out at least what's happening locally with your clients. I was told that he doesn't really have a case officer, which was very strange. The person who helped me was reasonably reasonably friendly, but didn't really seem to care one way or another, and said that he really couldn't explain to me where he was or what had happened. He didn't release any notes about him being transferred, but he saw that he was also being transferred. He said that there was some kind of note here about New Mexico, but yeah, he's just not really sure where he is right now. And we're talking 48 hours that I don't know where my client is. And so when you see the media and you see people talking about ice disappearing people, this is what's happening, is they are so chaotic, they're pushing the resources to the max, and they are so indifferent to humanity and to just basic things. You can imagine right now, if you didn't know where Lydia was for 48 hours, I mean, just what you'd be going through, what I'd be doing through if I knew Casey was going through something like this. And I just didn't even know what to

0:14:48 Matt: Tell a family in these circumstances. I don't know.

0:14:48 Thomas: Matt, I'm so close to becoming a terrorist. It's not even I'm like one. If Lydia gets a parking ticket, I'm pretty much there. You know, like if I'm let alone this.

0:15:00 Matt: It's horrific. I've seen a lot in the 18 years that I've been doing this. I've seen all kinds of abuses. I'm sure that I've been telling this story that a lot of people are going to be shocked to hear this. Sure.

0:15:17 Thomas: But importantly, for those of us who don't know that this isn't normal in the sense that like, was this happening three years ago, two years, you know, during Biden or because some of the stuff you tell me, it's like, yeah, this was common under Biden. It's like I want to be fair is fair. Like ICE has always been shitty. And I don't Know how much direct responsibility Biden had for that. Maybe he had some, maybe he had a lot. I don't know. But this is different though, right?

0:15:42 Matt: Yeah. No, this is different. Fundamentally, I think as an institution that can't really be fixed, I think that the way it's set up right now, it's accountable only to the president. But in the past, it has been run by better people, and it has set its priorities better. But right now, they are under this pressure, I I think, to pick up as many people as possible, and they seem happy to do it. And that means when they need to shift bed space around, that they're just willy -nilly sending people around, from what I can tell. And as this man's attorney, I have a right to know if he's in the United States, let's start with that. Sure.

0:16:08 Thomas: You would think, look, I know the law shows aren't always correct, but for one, this immigration stuff, like you said, it's not what we know from the TV and the movies because it's like different than normal court stuff. But I would think that that's got to be a minimum, right. Your lawyer has to be able to know where you are or talk to you at a minimum. Yeah. Give me a hemisphere. Give me something.

0:16:25 Matt: Or which country you're in, starting there, maybe, at a minimum. Yeah, right. Right. And again, your rights here are so limited. So we've been hearing stories, obviously, about Mahmoud Khalil and Rameza Ozturk here in Somerville, Massachusetts. Issues. Rameza Ozturk is a story that we really need to talk about more, but she was Tufts University student. You might've seen the video of her arrest.

0:16:46 Thomas: Oh, oh, that video. The one. Yeah. Okay. I did see that video, yeah.

0:16:48 Matt: Yeah. Very dramatic, unfortunately, and not unusual, but just to see it play out and to see ICE agents in masks approaching her and she doesn't know what's going on. And so far as we know, and I know they would have told us by now if there was anything else, she was arrested and detained and has been in ICE custody for weeks because she signed on to an editorial in the Tufts College paper, a very down -the -middle editorial about how Tufts needs to divest from Israel and mentioning that Israel is committing genocide. And that was co-signed with three other students and nothing else. They haven't alleged anything else. And Canary Mission that we've talked about before that's out there doxing people, that's what they came after her for. And it seems like they're being used as an advanced intel arm of ICE at this point.

0:17:11 Thomas: Unbelievable. Look, you can tell me to save it for where there's welcome. Maybe I should, but like we have put up with, I'm going to say 12, 13 years at this point, years of the crazy leftist kids, the crazy feminine, the fascist feminine Nazis at the colleges. If you call someone a racial slur, they are mad at you. It's George Orwell, 1984. You can't say anything anymore at these colleges because you'll get in trouble by the PC police.

0:17:59 Thomas: And you look into every example and every single example is like someone wrote a letter. It was like, hey, maybe don't do that. Maybe don't say really shitty offensive things. And no, but that's, oh, that's 1984, Matt, the language police. I believe in freedom of speech, Matt. You ought to be able to call someone a slur. Meanwhile, someone writes or signs onto an editorial in the school newspaper and has disappeared by ice yeah

0:17:57 Matt: The actual police, not the PC police. That's the story. That's where we're at. It is.

0:18:28 Thomas: That's actual 1984 like actually real though real not even barely a comparison it's insane

0:18:36 Matt: As we've talked about, the charge that she and Mahmoud Khalil are facing is essentially wrongthink, that it's going against our foreign policy. So, I mean, it's really, it is. I always want to be careful when we're talking about things being Orwellian or Kafkaesque, but it's hard not to use those expressions right now.

0:18:49 Thomas: Except when they are literally that like when yeah and it's I don't know how much this point needs to be made to this audience you know because I think our audience knows better but I just want to say this has always been the game there's very little of it that's like oh well this person just had a reasonable concern with the campus craziness uh but now it's gone too far it's like no this was why this was always funded this culture war campus craziness the anti -trans stuff the trans athletes it's always been astroturfed for this purpose and I just want people to be ready the next time

0:18:52 Matt: Literally that. Yes. And you know, yeah.

0:19:22 Thomas: There's seemingly we're always at a next time it's not worth approaching it as though it is some good faith thing that's just cropping up out of genuine concern it's alway an astroturft effort at this very thing always now if you're you're dealing with an individual person on a personal level that you're talking to in your life maybe they are good faith they might be they might just be like oh well I have good faith concern about this or or you know college whatever they might but I'm saying the people who are paid by right -wing organizations that we've covered on where there's woke to make this happen this is the point of it it is so that this stuff can happen it's never good

0:19:56 Matt: No doubt. I mean honestly, I have a lot of trouble with the concept of people acting in bad faith. I think I'm just naive sometimes, to be frank. I'm that just kind of goes to all this. But I should add, just to finish out the story we were telling here, that the last communication I had with the local field office, they told me that their records show, and this is about as much as they could tell me, that my client was transferred out of Plymouth this morning, not yesterday and not over the weekend. So they canceled his bond hearing, said he was in Albuquerque, and then only transferred him today.

0:19:59 Thomas: Faith yeah what

0:20:26 Matt: So that just sent my blood pressure up a little higher.

0:20:26 Thomas: What yeah because then you could just say whatever to cancel a bond hearing and it doesn't even have to be true

0:20:31 Matt: Right. You're just saying he's somewhere else and that the location is going to be somewhere else, and I'm going to find out what happened, and maybe I'll be able to tell you about it next time, but I am not going to rest until I find out what they're doing, what this tactic is, how it works. If other attorneys listening or anybody knows about other stories like this, about people disappearing, I'm gonna put out on social media too to see if we can get some power in numbers here and try to figure out what the tactic is. But something is happening that absolutely should not be happening, and I don't mean that in the usual sense when I say that things shouldn't be happening.

0:20:59 Matt: I mean this really shouldn't be happening Sure,

0:21:01 Thomas: All right, Matt. Well, we've got a lot to talk about. I want to get your take on this video that everybody is curious about. So why don't we take a little break and then we're going to play this video from this lawyer TikTok that is, I just want to know what's going on. Get a breakdown in your expert view. What exactly is happening here? Because I think, again, to us normies, this is all crazy. I don't understand how much of this is normal, how much is not. So after this break, we'll play this video.

0:21:30 Thomas: So I want to give credit. I saw this on Reddit. It's a lot of places, but I'm looking at, I went to the original, to the source, to The TikTok. I want to give him credit. At Law Office of James Rivera is the TikTok account. Looks like he's had a pretty popular law TikTok account, some videos with tens of thousands of views and stuff, but this one, 7.1 million views already, and it just went up 22 hours ago as of recording here. We'll play it, and let me know if you want me to stop and you could explain anything or I'll stop, but just take us through what's going on. At first, it almost seems like a movie, you know, but then it's like, oh no, this was very real. So it just starts off and he's getting out of his car. Again, it is very, very cinematic, but he's getting out his car and there's, looks like five people standing outside of a house, just standing around, they're plain clothes, dressed. I think we'll get the rest of it from the, from the video here

0:22:22 Clip: These people, these are ice, hanging out, in front of my client's house, so we're gonna, see what's up, ah, it's too early for this, y'all, what's going on?, who do y'al represent?, who

0:22:54 Thomas: This is so I oh my god so I think it's kind of noteworthy the main guy he talks to is a black guy there's two white guys who with their kind of their arms folded looking a little little ominous to me and then there's a white woman and then also another the fifth is a black man and it's just really interesting to see this like incredibly I don't know what the adjective is But this racial profiling where this lawyer walks out of the car and this HSI guy says, oh, we need to talk to her points to like the paralegal or something that's that's with him because she's like Latina and just assumes that's the person they're looking for. And it's like, what are you talking? Anyway, I'll replay it here.

0:23:31 Clip: Sure she's doing okay who's who that's not her yeah do you yeah okay who do you represent all right what's going on uh we need to talk to her make sure she doing okay who's that's her yeah we're looking for amy for what we're doing a welfare check on her make sure you're doing okay that's what's what what's the basis Listen, you're in court, aren't you? The immigration court case has been closed by the judge.

0:24:11 Clip: Okay. I can set up an appointment at my office. Nah, but I can give you my name and number.

0:24:23 Thomas: I just want to note it does sound like he's editing out parts of it that probably contain like any identifying stuff.

0:24:29 Matt: I would think, yeah. Right.

0:24:29 Thomas: So there that was a skip that you just heard there. There was a skip earlier too, just to give everybody listening context, but I suspect that's what he's doing, right?

0:24:37 Matt: But I can provide a context for what's going on here. And I do want to say this is some solid lawyering. And this is the best way, I think, to engage ICE is just conversationally and really to engage law enforcement generally when you have the privilege to engage them the way that this lawyer is, to just ask questions, stay calm, and just treat them like people. And they will usually do the same for you. I think a lot of people want to go in hot to an encounter like this, and that's just never the way to go.

0:24:55 Thomas: Yeah. Not because they deserve it because they aren't people, but because that's the only way to get anything done.

0:25:02 Matt: And just assume, I was going to say assume best intentions. You can't really do that, but just act as if you're reassuming best intentions. Yeah.

0:25:06 Thomas: No, I'm not doing that. Matt, Matt, you can go ahead and do that, but. I will never do that.

0:25:11 Matt: So off

0:25:12 Clip: She's around somewhere I'm assuming okay so now you need to talk to the sponsor too you say you need talk to her now who you need to talk too so I can so I consider set you up because I'm trying to prevent you all from coming back into this neighborhood you understand and she's she's doing fine I don't know what again I still I know what you're here for I don't if this is a this is the first time this has ever happened so this must be new policy now you

0:25:49 Thomas: And then they walk off their plain clothes to their plain cars. Man, that is just so creepy.

0:25:54 Matt: To the next one. Yeah, the

0:25:56 Thomas: It's just that it just creeps me out. Folks should you know I'll link it and you should watch it but god damn does that creep me out yeah

0:26:02 Matt: Trump administration is looking for $45 billion in immigration enforcement. If ICE gets that money, we are going to be looking at a different country. You're going to see those things happen on your block all the time. So let me just explain what's going on in this video.

0:26:14 Thomas: What the f man a welfare check but then oh we need to talk to the sponsor too you gotta I guess welfare check the sponsor to what five people need to welfare check something what it's just bullshit what's happening

0:26:23 Matt: So Reuters reported back in late February about a memo that had gone out where, this is going to sound pretty bad when I say it, there's really no good way to say it. But that ICE was going to go hard on unaccompanied children. This is a new thing they want to do, to try to deport as many unaccompanied children as possible. Easy, weak targets. Now, part of this is inspired by the Sound of Freedom -style QAnon conspiracy that all of these kids are being human trafficked. So there's a lot of investigation into human trafficking and the idea that these minor children who've come across the border, usually to flee gang violence or extreme poverty or abuse from their parents, one or more parents have been unable to care for them usually. In my experience, and I'll explain why this is relevant in a minute, but they come here and a sponsor takes them. And this is very unusual. Usually when we're talking about sponsors, that's not really a thing in the immigration system. Most people think that anybody can just sponsor an undocumented person. That's not how it works. But for minors, when they come hier, they're stopped at the border and then they're held basically in these facilities, like they're just for juveniles. And we all heard about this during the child separation crisis to be released from that facility you have to be reduced to a sponsor who is going to be vetted obviously and checked out and make sure that this person is not a sex offender or is actually related to you if they say they're related to and then you know if everything checks out you're released so the trump administration got into this kind of conspiracy theory thing about how a lot of these people were actually human traffickers or we couldn't account for some of these kids and obviously you know it's not the office of refugee resettlement's job and they're the people who release them to the sponsors they're not a child welfare agency so there's kind of this gap in services between you know you release them two sponsors and then don't really know what happens And if they don't show up to immigration court, as occasionally happens, but usually these are responsible people who are going to make sure they get to immigration court when they need to, then they can have deportation orders issue against them. But that's not what happened here. What they're saying here is they have some reason they want to check out the sponsor. Now, this memo has not been released. Reuters reported on it. We know about what they said. There is this kind of initiative right now to kind of investigate unaccompanied minors. And on paper, if you're assuming best intentions, there's some good reasons maybe to do that. But what concerns me here is what Attorney Rivera is saying, is that his client's case was already closed down by the immigration court, and she's waiting on a priority date, which means that she's awaiting a special immigrant juvenile visa. So there's special visas available for kids who have been abused, abandoned, or neglected by one or more parents. We do a lot of these visas in my office, Central American kids. And so that means an immigration

0:26:35 Thomas: Here yeah yeah

0:28:35 Matt: Judge already vetted this, already saw that this person has a sponsor, has somebody that has taken guardianship of them, and is allowing that petition to finish out. There's a waiting period because there's only so many visas available in this category every year and to every country. And so again, officers should, especially Homeland Security investigations, it's their job to investigate these things. They have that record. They know from USCIS that there's a visa petition pending. They know for the Immigration Court that this case was either administratively closed or were terminated because the judge saw that there's relief coming, that this person is going to end up getting a green card. So this is a, starting off the bat, this is a complete waste of resources.

0:29:09 Matt: You're just looking at it in a cold, hard, objective kind of way. But it's also just a way to show up and harass somebody and maybe put them back into deportation proceedings. I have no doubt that's probably what they were going to try to do. Very likely.

0:29:17 Thomas: My first question was going to be okay assuming they are from homeland security investigations then are they the kind of folks that would also just grab people or then my next question was gonna be oh wait oh he's the only one who said that. Could a few of them be the kind of goons who are going to grab people? How does that work exactly?

0:29:34 Matt: Yeah, they usually pair them up with guns. Enforcement removal operations are the gun division of ICE. HSI has more of the brains usually, but they have arrest powers. So that would be normal. They'd have kind of a joint thing where they'd take out a couple of your officers. But as the attorney says, of course, you know, five people is really excessive if you're talking about a 15 -year -old. Sounds like it's a 15 year old girl, if I heard that correctly. So, you Know, again, I don't know what's exactly what's going on here, but it's a complete waste. And you're not helping the neighborhood by showing up and scaring people this way.

0:29:58 Thomas: Yeah. So if you're the lawyer, what are you thinking is going on? You think it's what you said where they might be trying to like get, because she's already waiting for the green card, right?

0:30:06 Matt: Right?

0:30:07 Thomas: Or waiting for, I don't understand. Yeah. What do you think is happening? I don' t get it.

0:30:07 Matt: Yep. For a basis. It could just be that they're going through and systematically going through people who have been released to sponsors and checking out those sponsors. It could be part of this memo. We don't have the actual text of the memo, so I don' t know the exact terms. But Reuters is talking about how they've sorted minors into flight risk, public safety and border security issues, and they're supposed to be investigating minors that might have any issues at all. But it is a form of harassment. And they know when they show up to a house like this that they're terrifying people.

0:30:31 Thomas: Yeah. Do you think if she had been there, they would have like taken her?

0:30:35 Matt: They might have at least scheduled her an appointment to come in to check in with them. They may have issued her a notice to appear to go back into court. And I wasn't really clear. I don't want to go too much beyond the record here. He was saying that Coy's case was closed, which means that she could just have a case that's been set aside or it could have been terminated, which they could put her back into proceedings. Either way, that would just be pointless because she does have pending relief. She's got something thing she's going to have at the end of the day. It sounds like if she's waiting on that visa, that means it's been approved and they're just waiting on it to become available.

0:30:58 Thomas: Yeah, gosh. Well, anything else we should know about this kind of thing?

0:31:02 Matt: No, just good learning here and good for you, Attorney Rivera, for documenting it. I think it's really important to document these encounters.

0:31:07 Thomas: We need more attorneys Matt and attorneys Rivera out there. Wish we had more. And fewer of the attorneys who make $7 million a year and then cave to Trump immediately that work at big law firms.

0:31:17 Matt: And if you see one of these encounters, there's nothing wrong with pulling out your phone, depending on your state law, I should say, but generally speaking, if this is a public encounter, if you have officers that are speaking with somebody, and then it's how we got video of the Ozturk arrest and so many others, this is something that people need to see, so do your part to document it if you can safely.

0:31:32 Thomas: It seems like the right move, though, is keep incredibly calm and keep things normal, right?

0:31:37 Matt: Keep your distance.

0:31:37 Thomas: Yeah. All right. Well, we'll take another break here and then break down this Supreme Court decision.

0:31:45 Matt: Yeah we've got updates on a couple of cases we've been following closely, And I know that we've been talking a lot about immigration, but I have to tell you that this is all of us, that everything we're going to talk about today, as Justice Sotomayor rightfully points out in her dissent, could be coming for all of us soon. And even if you don't think you care about immigration issues, and I understand it's not for everybody, this is vitally important. This is the most important thing that is happening in the Supreme Court right now. It is the most important thing that is happening in our judiciary right now, because what happens with these cases is going to set the tone and is going to allow things to happen that we never could have believed before. I was reading the Fourth Circuit decision in the Abrego -Garcia case, which is the one we talked about last Friday with the Salvadoran man who was sent back and now by accident, admittedly by accident, and they're saying now that they can't bring him back. And there was a sentence in that case that I wish I could just send back and project onto a Times Square billboard in like October 15th of last year. I've been seeing a lot of sentences where I just wish we could tell people, seriously, this is where this is going. This is what we're going to be looking at. So let's talk about Abrega -Gargia first, and then we'll just check in on that and we'll talk about out the other one because they were related. These are very related cases. Now, as we talked about last week, Mr. Abrego-Garcia, there's very thin evidence that he might have had some kind of gang connections, but it doesn't matter because a judge found that he was not a gang member and that he in fact had been persecuted by gangs. He was sent down to the Salvadoran super prison and the federal government was continuing to make arguments as of last week and now continuing on. John Sauer, who we've covered before in other episodes for other reasons, now the Solicitor General of the United States, filed a disgusting brief, frankly, with the Supreme Court explaining why they didn't have any obligation to bring him back, seeking an emergency stay of the order from Jairus, which was demanding that they bring him by, I believe, midnight on Monday the 7th. Now, this is all very unusual because, as we're going to talk about, the writ of habeas corpus generally extends to jailers in the United States. You don't usually get to issue a writ of habeas corpus against a foreign prison. But as we've talked about, in the case of the SECOT, the Salvadoran hellish super prison, in which I think more than 300 people have died in the last three

0:33:38 Matt: Years, all apparently gone down as natural causes, even though we know that there's torture, suffocation, electrocution, and gang members being allowed to kill at will. We know that there was an agreement made by Marco Rubio with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bekele, to hold, and the numbers that I've seen are up to $6 million, for them to hold our detainees that we can't deport from Venezuela. And so this man was included in that round because he had this order of deportation that was withheld. We talked about all this last week. But the latest on this is that the government was pushing very hard to not have to comply with this order and saying, saying, our hands are clean at this point, we can't do anything, even though we know that they have some kind of agreement, some kind what's called a leasing agreement, basically, for space in the SECOT. And presumably, with any lease, you can call in to terms of the lease and undo some things. So I want to start with the Abrego-Garcia case because this is such an extreme, atrocious thing that has happened that they're saying that they can't bring it back. In the Fourth Circuit, in a decision written by Fourth Circuit Judge Stephanie Thacker, I want her to give her full credit for an incredible decision out of the Fourth circuit because the government came and sought to stay with the Fourth Circuit of this order to bring Mr. Abrego-Garcia back, and it whined about how they just can't possibly do that. And I want to read a sentence here that has so much beauty and moral clarity, and it is exactly what I was hoping we would see from the Supreme Court, but I knew that we would not see this from the Supreme Court. So just as a little appetizer before we get to the bad stuff, this is the way that I want judges to talk when they're faced with these situations. The United States government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the the country without due process. The government's contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.

0:35:11 Thomas: You go.

0:35:12 Matt: Unconscionable? I've never seen the government's arguments called unconscionable before. That is a degree beyond illegality. That is saying it is immoral. It's saying that it shocks the conscience, and that they are coming here and telling us that they can't bring this man back.

0:35:21 Thomas: Things are bad when these higher or courts have to write opinions that you actually wouldn't need a law degree for like at all that's when you know things are bad hey maybe don't disappear people into other countries

0:35:34 Matt: Exactly. That's what I'm saying. And the Sotomayor dissent that we're going to get into in the Supreme Court case is that kind of clarity. And the Roberts majority is exactly the kind of lawyer obfuscation that you'd expect when you're just trying to cover up something you know is horrible. But the sentence that I wanted to send back to October is this one from the Fourth Circuit decision. The executive branch may not seize individuals from the streets, deposit them in foreign prisons in violation of court orders, and then invoke the separation of powers to insulate its unlawful actions from judicial scrutiny. That is quite a sentence.

0:36:01 Thomas: Can't believe I have to say

0:36:03 Matt: Yep, that's accurate. That's accurate, and I want to point out that the lawyer who was in front of Judge Thacker, the DOJ lawyer on Friday, was very honest about this. And he was a very experienced attorney from the Office of Immigration Litigation, which is the part of DOJ that makes federal appellate cases. And this lawyer, Erez Rivani, was very honest, too honest for the DOJ's liking with the judge and said that he knew that what he was telling the judge was frustrating, that he understood that this was unconstitutional and wrong, basically, in so many words. And she said to the judge directly, you're going to be frustrated by the rest of this hearing because I don't have answers for you. He was placed on administrative administrative leave the next day on Saturday. Yep. This is a very experienced senior DOJ lawyer who knows what he's doing and has a conscience clearly and understood that what his, what he called his client was doing was unconscionable. And as we've been talking about, lawyers have to make these arguments for fascism to succeed. And they're just going to find somebody else who doesn't find it as frustrating to deport somebody to hell and not be able to bring it back.

0:36:35 Thomas: It wow uh but let them find somebody else though like just resign just don't do

0:36:57 Matt: Yeah. No, that's, I think that's probably where this is going, but I do appreciate his honesty. And Judge Thacker actually had a footnote in that fourth circuit decision in which she noted, this is extremely unusual because you essentially have the judicial branch commenting on the executive branch's hiring policies and firing policies, but she has an entire footnote where she calls DOJ out for putting him on leave for being honest with her, which is incredible. This is good stuff.

0:37:19 Matt: And then just another theme that we're going to return to by the end of this episode, but, you know, she talks about how this is a slippery and dangerous constitutional slope. If due process is of no moment, what is stopping the government from removing and refusing to return a lawful permanent resident or even a natural -born citizen.

0:37:16 Thomas: It wow gosh

0:37:37 Matt: And that's what I've been thinking about. That's what's keeping me up at nine right now.

0:37:36 Thomas: Yeah as usual the onion nailed it I think the onion said judge orders trump administration to let her back into the country or something like it was essentially from the standpoint that the judge was the one who's disappeared and it's like yep nope that's

0:37:47 Matt: Yeah, pretty much, right? That's where I'm going. Yeah.

0:37:52 Matt: And Jack Posobiec made a very funny joke about, you know, why can't we just put these judges on these planes?

0:37:53 Thomas: Pretty much yeah why can't you

0:37:58 Matt: Good stuff, man. And Reagan appointee J. Harvey Wilkinson, in this case, before we move on, had a concurrence, which basically agreed that this was wrong, but was saying that maybe we can't actually tell the government what to do. He begins that concurrence with a little bit less of a clarion call. He says, there is no question that the government screwed up here. Thanks, man.

0:38:16 Matt: I think that's really understating it, but at least you're on the right side of this one.

0:38:19 Thomas: No question that the nazis made a few boo -boos just of you know a string of mistakes one after the

0:38:25 Matt: Just errors. Yep. Yep, and I don't even think this is necessarily a mistake, but we're just going with the polite fiction that this was a mistake that they put this man who had specifically been issued protection on a plane. So just to close that out with Abrego Garcia, the big news from the other day was that this goes up because, again, the government is saying we can't comply with this order.

0:38:42 Matt: We don't have him in custody. You're you're telling us to do something, basically, you're commanding the executive branch to do some foreign policy, which is to engage with El Salvador to get it back. And again, if we have an agreement, we should be able to call that agreement in. I just will say that again. But John Roberts gave them a stay because that's what you do. The headlines were, you know, the Supreme Court, you know. Allows ban to stay in Salvador in prison. Yes, that's literally true. But all that Roberts was doing, it's just very much like what we were talking about with the Doge stuff, where they will just issue a stay automatically, no matter how ridiculous the argument is. Because the government is coming in and saying, we can't comply with this order. We're going to brief it and explain why. So the judge has to give them time, even though we can all agree that this is horrific. And I'm sure that John Roberts understands in some part of his heart that this is absolutely abysmal and that they need to do everything possible to bring this man back. He still has to issue the stay because otherwise the government isn't in contempt automatically and is saying they can't apply. And she did give them a very, very short leash, very short timeline on this. So again, I would be great if John Roberts stood up and said, no, this is ridiculous. You have to comply, but that's just not going to happen. It's not because because he's John Roberts, it's because it's the Supreme Court. It is routine. It's completely messed up, but it's completely messed up in a routine way, I guess is what I want to say about that stay from what you heard about it. So I think we can acknowledge that it's really bad while also acknowledging this is regular Supreme Court stuff. What is not regular Supreme court stuff is what I really want to talk about, which is the JGG decision. And that is the one that is challenging the removal of the Venezuelans, 238 people under the Alien Enemies Act.

0:38:42 Thomas: Other yeah okay

0:40:04 Matt: And we've talked about this a few times now. And this was a series of flights that went on on March 15th that famously judged James Boasberg, a federal judge, told ICE that if you have planes in the air right now, they need to turn around and no new planes can take off to deport people under this provision, under the Alien Enemies Act. And just to remind everybody, so you understand how bad this is, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is being invoked by Trump in a proclamation in which he's saying that somehow the Venezuelan government is the same as Tren de Aragua, his new boogeyman, and that for whatever reason, we can now just ship out Venezuelans, if we think they're members of Tren de without any kind of administrative or judicial review. That is the heart of what he's saying there, what the administration is saying. And this argument is so bad. It is so beyond unconscionable. It's so disgusting to me that there is even a debate to be had. It is absolutely horrifying that we have people on the other side of this question that we're asking, maybe we can designate some people alien enemies, have a country we're not at war with. And again, it's bad enough when we do it with a country where we're at war with, because we saw what happened to the Japanese and Germans during World War II in in this country. Lots of due process problems, but that at least was authorized by law because we were at war. But this is the thinnest pretext. This is disgusting. This makes me so angry every time I think about it. And this decision justifying this. Now, okay, let me back up. Let's just take a breath. It's about as angry as you're going to hear me. So obviously this is a mixed bag. This has not completely the Supreme Court saying in a five -throw majority that it's okay for Donald Trump to do this. And specifically, they did find that there has to be some review using the case law that I talked about when we talked about the Alien Enemies Act, where there is reason to believe under Ledecky and some of these other cases that the court can review basic constitutionality, statutory interpretation, can review whether these people are actually from the countries that the government's saying they're from, whether they're over the age of 14, which is what the order applies to. Those things have to be reviewed. But the question is, how do you stop it? Because the whole point of using the Alien Ememies Acts in this way, the entire purpose purpose of it is to short circuit deportation proceedings and so you don't see a judge. And so Judge Boasberg had entered two temporary restraining orders in this case to keep the government from deporting people under the Alien Enemies Act. One of them was for five of the people who originally brought the suit. And the second one was to everybody, to all Venezuelans who might possibly be affected by this order in this class while they're trying to litigate everything. And there were claims made under the Administrative Procedures Act, which is how most of these things that are challenges to the Trump policies have been made, where you're saying that you're applying the law in an arbitrary and capricious way. And there were allegations made under the federal habeas corpus statute. And of course, habeas is just the basic right to challenge your detention. Now, this is extra strange. And it's going to come up in this decision because this is a new application of habeas corporis. This is a completely new world that we're in here. Because typically with habeas, what you're doing is challenging your detention. They weren't doing that. They're challenging their removal from the United States. And There's no other way really for them to do this. I mean, the APA is also a vehicle, but this was sort of the crude instrument they had. And they're not even asking to be released.

0:43:01 Matt: That's the really messed up thing about it. They're

0:43:03 Thomas: I remember you said that before yeah

0:43:03 Matt: Asking to be detained in the United States. So keep that in mind as we're talking about this decision. Now, the government was trying to get the D .C. Circuit to stay or vacate the temporary restraining orders that he put in place so they could keep deporting people under this down to the SECON. And the D。C. Circuit wouldn't do that. But last night, a 5 -4 majority Supreme Court decided that this was okay because they were in the wrong court.

0:43:24 Matt: They came to the wrong wrong place. Everybody's favorite fallback. And I'm going to tell you why I think that's wrong to begin with, or the Hague. Yeah. So once again, Sonia Sotomayor is the voice of moral clarity and reason in this decision. We have a four -page decision from the majority led by John Roberts, which barely mentions the facts very much in the way that we've been talking about with so many of these bad decisions. They would rather pretend the facts aren't there. They'd rather talk about the procedural and the legal issues that they think are more interesting. And at this point, if you think that the only real problem presented when the government's trying to just designate people alien enemies and ship them to hell without a hearing, if you think the only problem there is the interesting jurisdictional questions it raises, then yeah,

0:43:30 Thomas: They should have gone to nuremberg or something yeah yeah you might be be a fascist yeah here's your

0:44:07 Matt: I don't think that you should be living in freedom, but you're also a perfect Supreme Court candidate at this point, apparently. So just starting there, this whole dance about whether or not the DC circuit is the appropriate place. Now, when people in Guantanamo Bay were trying to sue for their freedom, they sued in DC because that's where the decisions are made. That's where policy was coming from. And that that was basically who'd controlled Guantanamo. Made sense. There was nowhere else for them to go. And there are two questions here. And the second one is going to have to be answered by the Abrego Garcia case when that gets up there. The second question, which I'm not going to get to today, is where do you go if you're not in the United States, if you've already been removed? What court is there for you? You're not going to go to San Salvador. Presumably, D .C. is the only place to go, but there's a suggestion here it might be Texas. We'll get to that. But I want to focus on the JGG question here, which is the case before us. And The Supreme Court, I guess, just to make this as succinct as possible, has sort of made up a new kind of habeas, a secret third kind of habeas corpus, because this is one of those situations, I'm going to tell you, where it looks like they've done something that's facially kind of reasonable, makes sense what they're saying. But when you pick it apart and you pull back the mask, this is horrific. And they know full well that they're depriving people of any ability to actually do anything to help themselves in this situation. Now, just to get this out, it is a per curiam decision, which means it's not written by any one member of the court, and there is a fourth set of things they agree on. This is is a very confusing per curiam decision because it's a 5 -4 because you have two dissents. But the core thing that they agree on, which I will admit is a win. I mean, I have to acknowledge, we have to take these wins where we can. And the ACLU has said at least this is a minor win, is the court has acknowledged and agreed across the board that there has to be some way to challenge some of this somewhere,

0:44:10 Thomas: Sign yeah yeah yeah hmm yeah yeah oh okay thank

0:45:47 Matt: Some of us. But if you don't give people an actual way to do that and you put them in places where lawyers are hard to find and when you don t define how much notice they need to have or what the procedure is, then you know this isn't going to work out very well. So the big sort of starting point, the only good news here, is that detainees under the Alien Enemies Act have to receive notice after the date of this order, after April 7th, that they're 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. I don't know what that means. I have no idea what, how much reasonable notice, reasonable time. I mean, you're going to get a notice that says, you know, congratulations, you're being deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, you have the opportunity to go to court. But are you going to get that five minutes before you're deported? And I won't even, okay, let me say this. I should not even be using the word deported.

0:46:20 Thomas: Oh good I thought I was alone I don't know yeah

0:46:36 Matt: This is not a deportation. This is a kidnapping and removal of somebody from the United States under no law that actually should justify this. And the reason I'm so angry about this decision is that the majority refuses to look in the face, the fact that the executive has brought before them a complete pretext, an excuse that is so stupid, is so laughably bad. Sotomayor sees it and calls it out because because that's what she does. That's her job. But they're just pretending that this is normal executive stuff, and that their only job is to try to figure out where and how you're going to challenge this thing. There has to be limits, and there has to be somebody who can say, hey, we're not at war with Venezuela, and the Tren de Aragua is not running Venezuela, and you have no evidence that these people are actually gang members that you've presented to anybody. All of those things should have been mentioned to the majority, and they're not. So that's where the majority came up with. And I'll tell you a little bit about the dissents, because obviously that's Where You Find the Truth in these things. And Sotomayor goes through in in careful detail, and explains exactly why this is so bad, and, you know, explains why the court's decision to intervene is as inexplicable as it is dangerous. Now, remember, this is on the shadow docket. This is not in the course of a merits case being raised with the Supreme Court. There has been no significant briefing. There's just been some emergency back and forth. There hasn't been no oral argument.

0:47:43 Matt: And that's a point that Justice Jackson is going to make in her dissent, saying, what are we doing, making a decision this consequential on the shallow docket? How could it possibly be that important?

0:47:52 Thomas: Yeah how should this have happened exactly

0:47:55 Matt: This should have been, I mean, again, remember what we're talking about is TRO, temporary restraining order, on the government's ability to grab people off the street, call them alien enemies, and throw them out of the country. I think that's worth staying for a minute. I don't think there's any major emergency or rush here that would justify rushing this through. And that's what Jackson is saying.

0:48:02 Thomas: Disappear people yeah right so so let that let that tro in place because the harm is they don't disappear as many people. Yeah, take your time. But no, this is the court saying, no, no. We can't have Trump not be able to disappear people for any length of time. We need to let him do that while

0:48:22 Matt: Right. And litigate this, actually take it up through the usual way. Yep.

0:48:36 Thomas: We evaluate the merits.

0:48:38 Matt: And this is extra disgusting because you'll remember that this is exactly the the situation where John Roberts stepped in and said, hey, you can't say that you should impeach this judge, James Boasberg. He's doing his job. If you don't like it, take an appeal. But instead of allowing that appeals process to play out, the Supreme Court is stepping in as they so often do now.

0:48:54 Thomas: That was the same thing?

0:48:55 Matt: Yeah, that was the Boasburg decision.

0:48:56 Thomas: Oh, my God. I didn't realize that. So that really was the chief justice being like, hey, man, buddy, fascist to fascist, we got you. We got you? You don't need Come on. Yeah. What, it was just calm down? Like, we got, you know,

0:49:04 Matt: Right. Yeah. Just wait a few weeks. It turns out is what he was saying. Yeah?

0:49:13 Thomas: You're a fascist, I'm a fascists, we're all fascists here.

0:49:16 Matt: Because I want to make sure we acknowledge Justice Jackson's point before we move on quickly to the Sotomayor dissent, because she makes such a good, clear moral statement here about the shadow docket. She says that at least when the court went off base in the past, it left a record so posterity could see how it went wrong. See, e .g., Korematsu v. U .S., which was the case in which they upheld Japanese internment. Perfect. Absolutely perfect citation for something that we now recognize was a mistake, that they uphelled that, and that was the Alien Enemies Act itself that was a full litigation, full decision. With more and more of our most significant rulings taking place in the shadows of our emergency docket, today's court leaves less less and less of a trace. But make no mistake, we are just as wrong now as we have been in the past with similarly devastating consequences. It just seems we are now less willing to face it. So I just wanted to feature that because we're talking more about Saturday. But yeah, good stuff. Great stuff. I mean, this is how and again, you know, the in the Fourth Circuit decision on the related matter, Judge Thacker in the fourth circuit decision and Judge Wilkinson have an interesting back and forth where Wilkinsons basically saying this is more complicated than you think it is. And she's saying, No, I know it's complicated. I just think it's straightforward.

0:50:03 Thomas: That's, yeah. That's some good stuff. Yeah.

0:50:23 Matt: I this exchange they have. And there's a similar kind of thing going on here where Sotomayor goes on for 17 pages or so explaining exactly where the court has gone wrong, talking about, which we don't have time to do, but I'd be very interested to get into the details of the habeas argument here, because she's saying you're fashioning a completely new kind of habeas. You're ignoring sort of what the purpose of habea is supposed to be and what other options might be available to these people. And in the process, we're sanctioning massive human rights abuses and significant violations of due process. And she also, this is the really chilling thing, And Sotomayor has been right across the board on all of this so far. And of course, on Inauguration Day and one of our favorite episodes, we went back and listened to her dissent in the immunity case. I'm going to tell you that in terms of broad impact, this is going to be worse than the immunity chase.

0:51:06 Matt: And she says this here, and this is all I've been able to think about since March 15th, when these flights went out. The implication of the government's position is that not only non -citizens, but also U .S. citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for address if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. History is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this nation's system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise. That is chilling. That is chilling, and it's true. It's what we all know. But to have someone as smart and as capable and just in the position that she's in, saying this clearly, that you're enabling the rise of fascism in the United States, lawless regimes. And the fact is, too, everybody on the court agrees that we can't just snatch people off the streets and fly them out. I mean, that is, at the end of the day, what this decision does agree on, is that there has to be some opportunity for them to present something if they affirmatively raise it, which I would argue is not how it's supposed to work. They should have an opportunity to be put in proceedings where they can have that chance not to have to force it. But what they disagree on is how that happens. And so, of course, Roberts is doing the very Federalist Society kind of thing that they do where they're saying, well, here's a completely reasonable thing. You can't bring this in the DC Circuit because there's not enough. And I'd love to talk more about the idea of habeas corpus as a class. We don't have time to talk about that and about where and how it can be raised and how Justice Alito's own decision about five years ago might contradict some of this. But well, maybe Maybe that's another episode, but the conclusion here is that this has to be case by case and it has to be raised where you're detained. And unfortunately, where most of these people are going to be detained, they're going to Be under the jurisdiction of the fifth circuit. That's where these facilities mostly are that they keep people and they're doing that on purpose.

0:52:42 Matt: And the fifth circuit, of course, as we all know, is most likely to go along with bad Trump policies now. And even judge Ho on the fifth secret, who's no doubt angling for a Supreme court spot at some point, just a few years ago, he basically agreed with Greg Abbott in one of those cases that the Circuit had on what Abbott was doing to do his own border control, he essentially agreed that the governor was correct to say that this was an invasion, which is very concerning because that is, of course, the basis for the Alien Enemies Act.

0:53:05 Thomas: We do let governors determine that.

0:53:07 Matt: Yeah, right. But the fact that he was even open to calling border crossings an invasion would support, obviously, what they're doing here. So you're talking about case by case having to have people who have just been snatched off the street who don't have lawyers, who are being held in places where lawyers are generally not congregated, and we're going to have to have teams of attorneys able to do these habeas petitions from the inside.

0:53:24 Thomas: Who get themselves locked up so they can help them from the inside. It's a new sean connery and so that's now did they do that in the rock now that's a different movie what do they do they did at some point I don't know some other action movie oh

0:53:32 Matt: No, man, that's dark. Wasn't there a whole show where the guy was breaking his brother out doing that? No, but never

0:53:39 Thomas: Yeah that's around from our time it's the early 2000s prison break I never watched it but I think that's what that was

0:53:41 Matt: Saw that, something like that. That's right, that's right. That whole other thing. But I mean, this is going to require, and it's going to be a massive burden on the courts. I mean obviously it doesn't matter because it needs to happen, but what you're saying is case by case that potentially thousands of people might have to bring individual habeas claims where they have to have a judge look at their situation and see if if they meet this definition. Now, of course, the Trump administration is not going to be happy about these either. They're still going to find ways around it. I'm sure they're just going to keep unlawfully deporting people. But remember, we are a couple months in, two and a half months in right now, and this proclamation covers Venezuelans who they believe to somehow be connected, trained at Aragua. And as we all know by now, that means basically young men with tattoos. And we've already seen egregious, horrendous examples of obvious mistakes of people who are now in these horrible circumstances who may not be able to challenge their detention at all.

0:54:26 Matt: So this first round has not gone great, and they're now talking about potentially expanding that. And I don't think it's too long before you open that wedge up and you start saying, well, actually anybody who's crossed the border is an invader. So they're all alien enemies. And maybe people from El Salvador and Guatemala and Honduras, maybe from China too. The Chinese aren't our friends either. So maybe we just start doing this to everybody. And then it's only a matter of time before within a few years they decide, well the real problem in this country right now is Antifa.

0:54:54 Matt: And in a way there they're our enemies too. There's not actually an existing law right now that would necessarily allow US citizens to be sent to Siberia, but there's a lot of Siberia out there. I've been to it. It's a big place. Maybe Putin will give us a deal. I'd been all the way through Siberia. Yeah, it was our honeymoon. We took the Trans -Siberian Railroad. Never came up before.

0:55:05 Thomas: Into siberia wow what What? Plus,

0:55:12 Matt: Did our own trip. Yeah. I don't know that I'd ever go back, but I'm glad I did it. I don't want to be send back if anybody's listening in a position to send me there. It's the kind of thing that you think ahead. And I know this sounds like paranoid rantings. If you aren't in March 2025, if we were having this conversation last March, this might have sounded significantly more nuts. But you can imagine a situation where the president makes a deal with Vladimir Putin because he's got a lot of real estate in Siberia, famously. And maybe let's hold on to some of our more unruly citizens, some of them are more in.

0:55:40 Thomas: That orchestra is trans. So they're probably like, yeah, we got to put a stop to them.

0:55:42 Matt: Oh, sure. Got to find them. Yeah. But I mean, again, I am just, I know I'm spinning out a little here, but I think that when you you have as... Yeah, no, it's...

0:55:48 Thomas: Not really, Matt. It's I mean, it's also well, what I'm worried about, too, is just this idea that like it sounds like that's one way to go. It sounds like another way to go is if mistakes are not fixable, like if no one can make you fix a mistake, then whoopsie daisy, it'S just mistakes all the way down. And then I don't that's what I worry worry about like that gets us there faster I think yeah

0:56:02 Matt: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, in that affidavit, Robert Serenar from the Harlingen field office in the Abrego -Garcia case says that, oh, it just wasn't on the manifest that we weren't supposed to deport him. But I mean they took him in knowing that he had protection. They knew that and they told him that he was going to get to see a judge. They lined him and then they just deported him. Maybe it's a mistake, maybe it's not. I don't care.

0:56:28 Matt: If you're being that reckless, it doesn't matter.

0:56:28 Thomas: I guess I want to ask you this what according to this new ruling is supposed to happen if they snatch you off the street and you are a citizen and they're quote -unquote making a mistake and they put you in a prison in another country what is what is it what according To John effing Roberts is supposed To happen

0:56:49 Matt: Well, if you're in another country, that's going to be the next decision in Obrega -Garcia. But under this decision, if you're sitting there in a jail in Texas, right? If you're being held in Texas and you can say, no, look, I'm a US citizen, and most likely this is going to not be because I was born in California, but because both of my parents are citizens and I was brought abroad and it turns out that I never, or excuse me, let me say this a different way.

0:56:52 Thomas: There oh right okay yeah right oh god they'll decide birthright citizenship doesn't exist and so they'll do that stuff or

0:57:13 Matt: Sure, that would actually be a problem too, but there are plenty of people who naturalized a citizenship by operation of law. They don't even know it, that if their residents and their parents were citizens and they automatically become citizens, it's a thing that does happen. But yeah, no, one of the things that you're supposed to be able to challenge in this is your citizenship. So if they're saying you're a citizen of Venezuela, but you're actually a citizen of, I don't know, Colombia, you need to be able to bring that to a judge. And that's one of the things that's supposed to be included in this habeas. And one of things the Supreme Court has said for decades that the Unenemies Act, it has to be justiciable. You have to be able to look at if somebody is actually in the class of people that you say they are. But of course, yeah, when it comes to gang members, that's a lot harder to determine than your citizenship, yeah.

0:57:14 Thomas: Something yeah yeah well and and so the other thing is like can they just start not allowing you that time like if they just grab you and get you on a plane right away you don't even have that opportunity and then whoopsie daisy it's a mistake you can't make us do anything I mean I guess I guess again we'll see how the next decision shakes out but I that's what I worry

0:58:04 Matt: I mean, given the amount of disrespect we've seen to Judge Judge Bosberg, for just the basic, simple order of stop doing this until we figure out what you're actually doing and how you're justifying it. I'm not too optimistic about court orders being followed. I think that you're going to start to see them just handing people a piece of paper, maybe just in English, that says you've got the right to file a habeas petition. So go ahead and go to law school, come back in five days and file your habeas partition. And then they can say, yeah, no, we followed what the Supreme Court told us. We gave them reasonable notice, right? It doesn't say that you have to give them five days notice or five minutes notice. It just says there's reasonable notice that you get to take this to court. So yeah, no, this is rife with ways to abuse it, and I'm sure they know that. So I just want to close by reading the end of Sotomayor's dissent, just to really underscore how important this is. The government's conduct in this litigation, and that's interesting to say too, the conduct, not just the arguments, not just, you know, the position, but their conduct, poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law, that a majority of this court now rewards the government for its behavior with with discretionary equitable relief, is indefensible. We as a nation and a court of law should be better than this. I respectfully dissent. We should be better than us.

0:59:10 Thomas: Ah

0:59:10 Matt: We absolutely should be. But right now we're not. And we all have to face that together. It is. Yeah.

0:59:13 Thomas: Dark dark and shitty well done to all the people who protested by the way over the weekend we need to get that going again and I I don't know at what point at what point do we needと be doing more I just don't I don'T understand this I think that like there's so many lines that get crossed where you're like well on this next line then that's when and the things will happen. And then they cross that line. Oh, okay, well, then there's the next line. And I just don't, I don't know. It's a group action problem, I guess. I don' t know. I don''t know. I don ''t have any good answers, but this is, we need to be informed about this. We need to know what's going on. And I'm really glad you took the time. Thanks for taking the extra time for this Wednesday episode, Matt. Really appreciate it. I know you're busy. I release you to go back to trying to save people from getting disappeared.

0:59:53 Matt: Doing what I can. And please support lawyers like the ACLU and everyone else who are able to bring these impact litigation cases, because that's the only way. We've got to keep throwing lawyers at this thing.

1:00:04 Thomas: I love that image, especially because it involves throwing lawyers, except it involves doing the good ones that I actually like. Why can't we throw the bad?

1:00:07 Matt: The World War Z. Yeah, that's right.

1:00:11 Thomas: Can we throw a bunch of the bad ones at them? Just just first, you know, just launch them two at a time from a from a trebuchet. Just just get them get them out there. All right. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much, Matt. And thanks to our supporters for making the show happen. And we'll see you on Friday.

1:00:12 Matt: Front lines. See you soon. I have dangerously low blood pressure. You know, if I mistakenly left something behind in a place I was... Oh, it's the haunted heater. It's... I haven't heard that in a while.

1:00:47 Thomas: Oh, holy shit. The stomp starting up. Oh, OK.

1:00:53 Thomas: No question that the Nazis made a few boo boos. You're a fascist. I'm a fascists. We're all fascists here.