Trump DOJ Uses State Secrets Claim To Stonewall Abrego Garcia

INSIDE: James Boasberg ... Letitia James ... RFK Jr.

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A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Two Months And Counting

We’re coming up on two months since Kilmar Abrego Garcia was wrongfully removed from the United States, despite an immigration judge order barring it, and sent to a prison in El Salvador. Two months of incarceration for a deportation that the Trump administration admits was an error, and two months of stonewalling federal courts by the Trump administration, which refuses to try to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release despite a month-old Supreme Court order to do so.

In a late night filing in federal court in Maryland, the Trump DOJ continued to tell the courts to pound sand, in so many words, rather than divulge the details of what it’s done and what it plans to do to facilitate his release. The Trump DOJ isn’t as explicit as that; it’s more slippery and it continues to argue that it has complied with all court orders. But the upshot of raising tenuous state secrets claims to thwart discovery in the case is to further stonewall and delay, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argue:

“The fact that the Government has repeatedly publicized information—in congressional testimony, public interviews, and social media posts—about Abrego Garcia and its unwillingness to facilitate his return confirms that answering the requested discovery would not imperil national security. More likely, the Government’s assertion of state secrets is consistent with an effort to avoid judicial scrutiny of its actions.”

That last part is key.

Unlike normal discovery, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis is using this process to smoke out whether the administration should be held in contempt of court for repeatedly defying court orders. Stonewalling the discovery phase is part of the same overall pattern of contemptuous behavior, though the latest conduct is cloaked in enough of a veneer of an argument to probably avoid sanctions.

The latest round of filings – including the declaration from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that is the basis for the state secrets claim – are either sealed or partly redacted so we still don’t have a complete view into the factual underpinnings for the invocation of the state secrets privilege. The seriousness of the state secrets privilege claim is colored by the administration’s belated invocation of it in the earlier Alien Enemies Act case in DC, where U.S. District Judge James Boasberg was incredulous that it could apply to those deportations.

Cutting To The Heart Of The CECOT Matter

I don’t usually burden you with reading entire legal filings, but this short new filing from the ACLU in the Alien Enemies Act case before U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in D.C. cuts to the heart of the question of whether the Trump administration has constructive custody of the migrants transferred to El Salvadoran prisons.

Boasberg already seems pretty convinced that constructive custody exists, but he wants limited discovery done to help establish a clear factual basis, presumably to buttress his ruling as it goes up on appeal.

This is only the proposed discovery ACLU wants to do on behalf of those still incarcerated in El Salvador; it’s not new factual information. But the precision of the questions and their implications frame up the issue clearly:

Just in case it’s still not clear, the case before Boasberg is the most viable legal vehicle at present for securing the return of the Venezuelan nationals deported on March 15 without due process under the Alien Enemies Act.

Immigration Case Miscellany

• In a case out of the Northern District of Texas, the Trump Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to allow it to resume deporting Venezuelan nationals on grounds other than the Alien Enemies Act.

• “A federal judge ordered the release of a former student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from prison Friday, arguing the detention appeared to have ‘been almost exclusively triggered’ by the militant Zionist group Betar,” The Forward reports.

• In a case out of the Western District of Louisiana involving allegations that a 2-year-old American citizen was deported to Honduras with her non-citizen mother, the family has dismissed its lawsuits for reasons that remain murky, ABC News reports.

For Your Radar …

Not every investigation by the Trump DOJ is inherently suspect, but these are some that bear monitoring:

• The Justice Department is now investigating a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia and has given limited immunity to the owner of the vehicle he was driving, a convicted felon in an Alabama prison with whom investigators recently spoke, ABC News reports. Hard not to see this as part of the larger White House-led smear campaign against the mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia.

• The Justice Department will investigate a planned housing development in Texas that would have a mosque at its center, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) announced. The proposed project has stirred up an Islamophobic backlash among high-profile elected Republicans in the state.

• “If there was ever a textbook case of selective prosecution, the Justice Department investigation of New York Attorney General Letitia James appears to be it,” James Zirin writes.

But Why?

I’m still puzzling over precisely why the Trump administration is fixated on the Library of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office – and especially why Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is now the acting Librarian of Congress and bringing a slew of DOJ officials there with him. Some of them were stymied yesterday from entry into the LOC’s offices.

There are partial answers to why, but they don’t really add up into a coherent whole yet. Yes, the former librarian was a Black woman. Yes, the head of the Copyright Office had just issued a warning on AI and copyrights. Yes, Blanche is Senate confirmed so he can serve as an acting official, which explains a lot of the dual-hat roles Trump administration officials are playing.

While those answers explain particular elements of this episode, they don’t offer a global theory of the case. Stay tuned.

Judges Under Threat

The low-key ominous threat of unsolicited pizza deliveries at the homes of federal judges and their family members has continued, the WaPo reports. D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Michelle Childs says she has received seven anonymous pizza deliveries so far. Adding to the menace: “In recent weeks, orders have been placed in the name of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas’s son, Daniel Anderl, who was fatally shot at the family home in New Jersey in 2020 by an attorney who posed as a delivery person.”

Air Force One Lite

Following up on my more pedantic concerns about the technical feasibility of retrofitting a lux Qatari 747 for Trump to use as Air Force One by later this year, I can’t find any reporting that suggests it’s close to possible.

“But retrofitting the 13-year-old aircraft to current Air Force One requirements would take years of work and billions of dollars, current and former U.S. officials say,” the WaPo reports. “Such a task would be impossible to complete before Trump leaves office.”

But for a complete look at the many layers of inanity here, from the corruption to the security threat to the practical limitations, there’s no one better that Garrett Graff. This is perfectly in his wheelhouse.

DOGE Watch

• Politico: RFK Jr., DOGE gutted legally required offices at HHS

• WaPo: The hidden ways Trump, DOGE are shutting down parts of the U.S. government

• WSJ: OMB Director Russ Vought Takes Over the DOGE Agenda

Lede Of The Day

NYT: “Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, posted photos on Sunday of himself and his grandchildren swimming in a contaminated Washington creek where swimming is not allowed because it is used for sewer runoff.”

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