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A distinguished federal judge in Minnesota (not the ditzy Menendez recently overruled by the 8th Circuit, but Judge Schlitz) is ordering ICE to do bond hearings and otherwise accommodate hundreds of spurious habeas corpus petitions.
This Court has been extremely patient with respondents [U.S. Dept. of Justice], even though respondents decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result.
In other words, ICE had no business deploying resources commensurate with the scope of law-breaking because they should have known that activist lawyers would abuse the system and take pains to inconvenience the court. Law enforcement should instead be reduced to the comfort levels of a corrupt legal and political establishment. One might ask why Judge Schlitz would not instead fast-track these petitions, ask for more resources, sanction bogus claims, or otherwise expedite the administration of justice. Quick dismissal of demonstrably bogus petitions would help discourage an excessive volume.
The fact of successfully delaying deportation also allows scrutiny and second-guessing of detention conditions and an opening for more lawfare. Delay in this context is a victory for those opposed to the rule of law and a slow death of immigration enforcement.
Ask yourself: If an escaped convict gets caught, does he get a trial to decide whether he goes back to jail? Never. And yet when someone convicted of violating our borders gets sentenced and deported and then illegally returns, why isn’t he made to continue to serve his sentence of not being in the USA immediately after ICE catches him? What is left to adjudicate?
The left understands that the uniparty does not like pain. It hates having to confront bad behavior from minorities and the left in general, and the same ruling uniparty establishment demands that the working middle class never push back. The uniparty resents MAGA far more than BLM or ANTIFA despite the left's lopsided record with respect to violence, destruction of property and fomenting societal rot.
As the acting voice of the uniparty, Judge Schmitz requires that ICE conform to the preferences of its lawless critics, scale back and spend far more resources on superfluous legal process. The scale and scope of the threat to our society posed by the Biden criminal invasion must be glossed over because it would be deemed déclassé and rude to admit that it is a problem and that Trump/MAGA might be right about anything -- and with the added bonus of self-congratulation for costless compassion for illegal aliens.
Minneapolis is not yet Weimar because the right is not comparably violent and lawless. An interesting question is what would happen if the uniparty anesthesia stops working on the normals.
Discussion (25)
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My knowledge of habeas corpus law is asymptotically close to zero. Habeas corpus never came up in my forty years of corporate intellectual property law practice.
That said, I do not understand how habeas corpus gets more than the most minimal of attention in immigration cases.
[Habeas corpus is a legal process by which a person in custody petitions for release from custody because the custody is improper.]
The “process” “due” in an immigration case is almost none. The only question is whether the person has current permission to be in the country. And there are clear records on that. It’s not like a criminal case in which each of several elements that make up a crime must be proved, which calls for more legal process.
When a person from outside the country presents himself at a border entry point, the person and his paperwork get a cursory examination by a border control agent, and that’s it. No one from outside the country has any "right" to be admitted to the country. There is no logical reason a person who illegal evaded border control to make it into the interior of the country is due any more legal process. A person who is in the country without permission has no basis on which to claim custody and removal from the country is not proper. That person is not entitled to roam free around the country.
It is simple to determine whether a person taken into custody has current permission to be in the country. No extensive legal process needed.
There is no evidence that federal immigration law enforcement officers are taking into custody for immigration enforcement purposes people who have current permission to be in the country, so widespread or extensive habeas corpus procedures are not needed.
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Because I don’t even pretend legal expertise on the internet, I presume there is some legal principle the judge is employing.
What perturbs me is the Justice Department lawyers have not anticipated this tactic.
And according to Powerline, the habeas petitions are not public. Why would that be?
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On another post the subject of Citizenship came up. Progressives currently have tried to erode this concept and conflate illegal immigrants with that of US citizens, with no legal distinction. One result is to apply all the rules of a US citizen to that of an illegal immigrant (included the blatantly criminal ones) resulting in the stall tacit of gumming up everything in the US legal system. A clever bureaucratic strategy. With the large amounts of illegals it is practically impossible to process them through a series of tedious court procedures that will be dragged out with the detainee released in the meantime. Then there is calls of not inappropriately saturating the legal system as "no due process", as if there is not distinction in with regard to this of citizen vs illegal status.
They also consider US Immigration laws equal to escaped slave laws pre-civil war. So they fundamentally believe that immigration law is immoral and they have a duty to disobey it. Even in extreme cases where the immigrant is a violent criminal or engages in fraud. I've seen this point repeatedly made in Progressive talking points. So they view it not simply at a legal battle but a moral one to nullify US Immigration enforcement. And they view themselves as Harriot Tubman in a way. It's framed in 60s civil rights language too.
The US DOJ under Trump is probably understaffed with capable people who will follow the admin policy of enforcing immigration law and general law enforcement. Pam Bondi is on the weak side too. I think the Republicans need to create a Federalist Society type for staffing the government with competent lawyers who have some vigor. Conservatives seem to have a huge handy cap in the legal muscle space and it shows.
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Good info and explanations here. However, as I mentioned in my comment the Progressive advocates on this issue simply don't care.
The legal traditions and distinctions no longer are valid in their view. They likely have to spit ball something to put into legal paperwork for hopefully a sympathetic judge, but I've heard consistently that the believe the immigrant process to be immoral and therefore can be discarded they same way we discarded Jim Crow and fugitive slave laws. Instead, those with illegal state get rights of full American citizens and even better legal representation from aligned NGO organizations.
The battle seems partly legal, but also largely about the Will to push through the agenda.
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Finding "competent lawyers who have some vigor" will be a tough task. Heck, finding anyone on the Republican side who has “vigor” is nearly impossible. The Marxist left has been defeating our side handily for as long as I have been alive. Why is that? Are they smarter, or is our side too soft, or both?
Too many don’t understand Marxist cultural revolutions. They are ignorant. That leads to the next point:
Too many on our side have seen Trump as a greater threat than the Marxist Democrat Party. OK, that is stupid. However, Democrat voters don’t see that in their own party, so there is that, also stupid.
Our side is too soft and the Marxists know that and exploit it. We saw that in the summer of 2020. Create enough chaos and our side will just want it to stop, even if it means giving the left what it wants. Despite seeing that, too many on our side don’t see version 2.0 playing out in MN. Soft and stupid.
Why don’t they see it? They don’t understand Marxist tactics. Ignorant. Byron York sees it. Mollie Hemingway sees it. Various vets on X see it and try to explain it. Our politicians don’t see it.
Byron York:
Mollie:
Vet pundits:
Here is what soft looks like - InfantryDort attacks a libertarian example:
I have a screenshot of even Newt caving. So did Gowdy. The elected politicians cave because they are soft and they know their voters are soft. Don’t be soft or the left will win. They believe they got their first scalp. They are invigorated. Now they will go after Noem. Don’t be soft. MSM coverage is over 90% negative. Don’t fall for it. Don’t get played by the commie left. They know what works, don’t let it work.
https://thedailybs.com/2026/01/27/anti-ice-rioters-feel-emboldened-after-border-patrol-
leaders-ouster-dcnf-reporter-says/
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