From The Hill newspaper,
Trump administration seeks to expedite removal of 5-year-old Minnesota boy.
[Cue the violins.] You remember this case,
The Trump administration is seeking to expedite the removal of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, days after a federal judge in Texas ordered their release from an immigration detention center.
That Texas-based federal district judge’s “order” is completely laughable, citing bible verses, Magna Carta, and the Declaration among others (everything, except for federal statutes) as authorities for ordering the release of the Arias family. The document includes a photo of the tyke and is effective on the impossible date of February 31.
Perhaps this farce will soon come to an end. From CNN,
Appeals court greenlights Trump admin policy of detaining undocumented immigrants without opportunity to seek release.
Bloomberg explains the implications,
The Trump administration has the power to detain noncitizens arrested in the interior of the country without giving them a chance to argue for their release in immigration court, a Fifth Circuit panel ruled Friday.
Also,
The administration’s mandatory detention policy has led to an unrelenting flood of habeas petitions in which the overwhelming majority of lower court judges have sided against the Trump administration’s reading of the law.
The issue appears to be destined for the U.S. Supreme Court. The Fifth Circuit decision applies in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
I’ve been following the habeas phenomenon in Minnesota, where more than 750 habeas corpus petitions have been filed in just the first five weeks of 2026. Nine more were filed this Saturday morning.
The 43-page Fifth Circuit decision came on a 2-1 vote. The dissenting judge (Dana Douglas, Biden appointed) wrote,
In a fiery dissent, Douglas said the lawmakers who wrote the statute “would be surprised to learn it had also required the detention without bond of two million people.
No. The Congress of 1996 would be shocked and dismayed that there were 2 million brand-new illegal immigrants.
[Note: an earlier version of this post appeared on Power Line.]