To totally oversimplify things, Donald Trump was elected to do two things: Fix the economy and the border. He’s off to a rocky start on the economy with tariffs, though he’s playing a long game not dictated by immediate stock market reactions. As for immigration, his work is already incredible — illegal crossings are a tiny fraction of the intentional invasion under the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris open border.

Closing the border to illegal crossings was job one, and so far, so good. The next part is far more challenging — deporting dangerous illegals. Left-wing activist judges are making it even harder.

Last month, Judge James Boasberg, appointed by Barack “Pen and Phone” Obama, infamously felt so strongly that Trump exceeded his authority that he not only put a 14-day hold on Trump’s deportation order but demanded that planes literally in the air turn around and bring terrorist criminals back to the United States. That case pertained to a couple hundred Venezuelan members of the terrorist gang known as Tren de Aragua.

That legal battle continues, as do various fights over other deportations. What follows are some highlights from the legal wrangling.

First, despotic judges are an increasing problem in need of a solution from Congress and/or the Supreme Court. Exhibit A is the aforementioned Judge Boasberg. Journalist Julie Kelly reviewed court transcripts revealing that Boasberg seems to have ensured that he was the judge “randomly assigned” to the Venezuelan deportation case and that he brought a particular Trump animus to the hearings.

“He knew this case was coming,” Kelly explained. “He wanted this case. He wanted to stop the deportations and most importantly — he wanted to set a contempt trap for the Trump administration.” In Kelly’s estimation, Boasberg expects “that the executive branch should WAIT FOR APPROVAL from the judicial branch before taking action on matters clearly under the purview of the presidency including foreign policy and diplomacy.”

Boasberg’s behind-the-scenes actions and rulings certainly reek of judicial overreach, and it’s part of what you might call the vast left-wing conspiracy to flood the country with illegals that are nearly impossible to remove.

That said, there may be a bit of executive overreach happening, too.

Immigration attorney and syndicated columnist Christine Flowers explains the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and came here at age 16 in 2011. In 2019, he was granted a “withholding of removal” to protect him from deportation to El Salvador. The standard for such status is even higher than asylum, Flowers says: “You need to show at least a 51% chance that you will be harmed” if you are returned to your home country.

Nevertheless, Garcia was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported along with those Venezuelan gangsters. “Due process is as important as national security,” Flowers notes before quoting Benjamin Franklin’s famous line: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, another Obama nominee, likewise had a problem with how the administration handled Garcia’s case. Officials offered “no evidence” of his gang membership, she said, ordering his release. “There were no legal grounds whatsoever for his arrest, detention, or removal,” the judge wrote Sunday. “Rather, his detention appears wholly lawless.” Despite ICE’s admission that the deportation was a mistake, the administration has essentially ignored the order to bring him back.

Xinis also objected to detaining deportees at “one of the most notoriously inhumane and dangerous prisons in the world.” Before writing that off as the emotional complaint of an Obama nominee, consider that Flowers says the same thing, calling it “one of the most dangerous and notorious prisons in the Western Hemisphere.”

I have little sympathy for illegal terrorist gangsters, but we better be really sure they’re the only ones being sent there.

Finally, there are the deportations of legal immigrants who have run afoul of the law.

We’ve written about Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia student agitator involved in the anti-Semitic/pro-Hamas riots on campus. The administration has revoked visas for him and roughly 300 other students. Rumeysa Ozturk is one of them.

She was arrested recently, and it sparked outrage because it was caught on video and the government agents were masked and in plain clothes. “Why were the agents masked, which we aren’t used to seeing?” asked National Review’s Rich Lowry. “Because DHS agents are being doxxed.” That is indeed a problem, as is the fact that a large mob of protesters showed up at the home of Border Czar Tom Homan.

As for Ozturk, the other rub is that it appears the pretext for her arrest was an anti-Israel op-ed, not an actual crime. She’s lived here legally for eight years and has the right to due process.

That last point is why Ozturk’s case is relevant to the others above. The administration has to walk a sometimes fine line. Millions of illegals, many of them dangerous, are in our country, and as many of them should be removed as possible. We are not obligated to allow hostile actors to remain if their visa was legally obtained, but circumstances, including behavior, have changed.

There is a sense that the system is so broken and, even if functioning correctly, would be so overwhelmed that we must act as fast as possible to end the invasion. Take whatever action is necessary to remove illegals and even undesirable or dangerous legals.

Similar to our argument against red flag laws, however, due process is important. The administration will see better and more lasting success if officials are as thorough and careful as possible. To restore the Rule of Law, winning the argument, legally and publicly, might be as important as the actions themselves.

Follow Nate Jackson on X/Twitter.

---

Update: Fox News reports, “Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary stay Monday blocking, for now, a lower court order that required the Trump administration to return by midnight a Maryland resident who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador last month.”

And The Wall Street Journal reports, “A 5-4 Supreme Court on Monday lifted a judge’s order that had blocked the deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members to a Salvadoran prison, granting the Trump administration’s request to expedite the removals under an 18th century law known as the Alien Enemies Act.”