Three Different Court Orders Violated
The Trump administration was found in contempt of court Friday for wrongfully deporting a young Salvadoran man last month for the second time — after he had already been unlawfully deported in March, then returned to the U.S., before being removed again.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher ruled that the administration’s conduct violated three separate orders that she had issued in the long-running class action settlement involving unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in the United States. The case has been a flash point for Trump administration defiance of court orders, with some 100 asylum seekers having been wrongfully deported in violation of the settlement agreement approved by Gallagher.
For the past four weeks, the administration and class counsel were in a standoff. The administration conceded the removal was in error and was prepared to return the young man — referred to in court only as “E.L.A.” — to the United States. But it was opposed to demands by his lawyers that he be released upon his return and not deported again until his asylum application was heard.
Gallagher’s opinion finding the administration in contempt remains under seal for now, but her order was made public. She granted some, but not all, of the conditions for the return of E.L.A. that his lawyers had been seeking. She ordered the administration to:
return E.L.A. to the United States, with three days notice to him and his lawyers of his time and place of arrival;
not remove him again until it fully adjudicates his asylum application;
provide five business days notice to him and lawyers if it intends to remove him again for any reason;
return to E.L.A. all of his personal property and documents that were removed from him at the time of his wrongful deportation.
Gallagher did not order E.L.A. released from custody upon his return, as his lawyers had sought.
Gallagher’s order makes no mention of sanctions against the government for its contempt, but in fairness E.L.A.’s lawyers have not sought sanctions yet, focusing in the immediate aftermath of his second deportation on getting him back to the United States and not immediately deported a third time. Gallagher previously found the administration in contempt in July in a different aspect of the same case.
READ: Mecklenburg Resignation Letter
Sheri Mecklenburg, the federal prosecutor implicated in the mishandling of the Broadview Six grand jury who stepped down last week to defend herself, penned a blistering resignation letter to U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros. In it, she blames him for pursuing felony charges against ICE protestors over her recommendation that they be charged with misdemeanors, a claim the Trump DOJ later denied.
A key hearing into the Trump DOJ misconduct in the case is set for Thursday.
The Purges: FBI Edition
Michael Burgwald, the head of the FBI Washington Field Office’s counterterrorism division, and his deputy, Courtland Rae, were demoted Friday due to dissatisfaction with their investigation of allegedly threatening phone calls made to MAGA podcaster Katie Miller, the wife of White House aide Stephen Miller, Bloomberg reports.
“The orders from the bureau’s DC chief Darren Cox stemmed from frustration shared by the Miller family that the field office was moving slowly in probing allegedly harassing phone messages,” according to the report.
The White House denied involvement in the removals. Cox said the decision was his, not FBI Director Kash Patel’s, but Patel reportedly “was also displeased with the office’s progress on the case.”
Quote of the Day
“I told them until they perp-walk a doctor, the job is not done.”—Chad Mizelle, the onetime chief of staff to Attorney General Pam Bondi, bragging to the WSJ about targeting providers of gender-affirming care for minors
All You Need to Know
If there was any doubt that last week’s pro-Trump TV ad paid for by the U.S. government was in fact an undisguised campaign ad ahead of the midterm elections, the administration took pains to remove that doubt by also running a TV ad straight from his 2024 campaign:
Midterm Elections: Ground Rules Edition
In two rulings on Friday, the Supreme Court:
allowed the Trump administration to use data from the Social Security Administration to verify people’s citizenship status (though only on a limited basis for this election);
rejected yet another attempt to use a GOP friendly congressional district map in Missouri.
Thread of the Day
Trump Continues Retaliation Against CNN
After winning in court to get its White House credentials back, CNN was barred from Air Force One on Saturday.
AI-pocalypse Now
Axios: Top AI companies probing tens of thousands of security incidents
New York Times: OpenAI agents meddled with the websites for the SEC and the Education and Commerce departments this summer without the AI company’s knowledge.
Washington Post: How the U.S. and Russia weakened safeguards — including stripping human oversight — in a landmark UN pact on AI weapons.
Suspected Terror Plot in the UK
Five UK nationals were arrested Sunday on suspicion of terrorism outside of a Royal Air Force base used by the U.S. Air Force to conduct operations against Iran. The five men were all in their 20s. A bomb disposal team was reportedly on site and several dozen homes in the area were evacuated.
Fantastic Read
An enthralling and well-reported piece from the Wall Street Journal on the mystery man who keeps popping up with Kimberly Guilfoyle — the former Fox anchor, one-time fiancée of Don Jr., and now U.S. ambassador to Greece — as she wheels and deals across Europe.
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OpenAI's claims that its "agents" — aka bots — were operating in devious ways "without the company's knowledge" is just so much self-serving claptrap...I mean, these bots have been repeatedly set "tasks" that in fact become hacking templates, and there isn't just a small handful that the company acknowledges and admits to, but now — as noted in the Axios article — we learn of "thousands" of such attempts at infiltrating sites through the Internet.
OpenAI and its confrères have opened a Pandora's Box of agentic mischievousness that in fact is criminal behavior under several federal acts, and it's well past time that the AI techbros and their outfits be held criminally liable for their actions, full stop.
Jail them!