justin waLKER hon
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DC Circuit restores Trump's expedited deportation policy | Courthouse News Service
WASHINGTON (CN) — A D.C. Circuit panel on Tuesday reversed a federal judge’s order blocking the Trump administration from expanding expedited removal procedures to immigrants who have been in the country under two years.
In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court determined that the Department of Homeland Security’s revival of an identical 2019 policy, which allows the department to exercise its removal power to the “maximum extent allowed by Congress,” does not violate immigrants’ due process.
On Jan. 21, 2025, acting Secretary of Homeland Security Benjamin Huffman authorized expedited removals and expanded their range to immigrants encountered within 100 miles of the southern border.
Make the Road New York filed suit the next day, arguing the revived policy would expand “fast-track deportations” and give President Donald Trump “a cheat code to circumvent due process and the Constitution.”
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Joe Biden appointee, granted a stay in August 2025 after finding the policy likely violated the immigrants’ due process rights, as they had a significant liberty interest in remaining in the country and faced a substantial risk of that right being wrongfully denied under the Huffman policy.
U.S. Circuit Judge Justin Walker, joined by U.S. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, wrote in the court’s opinion that immigrant rights group Make the Road New York could not show the expedited removals denied immigrants notice and the opportunity to be heard.
“There is no evidence that the designation or Huffman memorandum secretly restricts the right to notice and an opportunity to respond, that the command officers to withhold information, that they prohibit aliens from raising continuous presence or any other defense, or that they limit the time or opportunity afforded to aliens after a removal order issues,” the Donald Trump appointee wrote. “If any of those things are happening, they are not the result of the designation or Huffman memorandum. Those directives are silent on these matters — and a directive’s silence cannot command, authorize or structurally ensure a constitutional violation.”
Walker said Cobb used the incorrect due process standard — from the 1976 Supreme Court case Matthews v. Eldridge — when she froze implementation of the policy in August 2025.
“Even assuming for the sake of argument that the affected aliens have due-process rights, the due process claim should be evaluated under the less demanding standard in Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co,” Walker wrote, citing a 1950 case.
He pointed to the Supreme Court’s decisions in Trump v. J.G.G. and A.A.R.P. v. Trump — two shadow docket decisions that Rao cited at oral arguments to suggest immigrants “don’t have a liberty interest to remain because they’re here unlawfully” — where the justices applied Mullane’s standard.
The case’s test requires a court otherwise determine if a removal notice was “reasonably calculated” to inform either party and afford them an opportunity to raise any objections, Walker said. In A.A.R.P., the high court found such notice is adequate as long as an immigrant has sufficient time to contact an attorney, file a petition and pursue relief.
The record in the case shows several immigrants have been wrongfully subjected to expedited removal, despite having been present in the country over two years, but Walker blamed individual immigration officials rather than agency policy.
“Is that because they were denied an opportunity to prove continuous presence?” Walker wrote. “If so, that’s illegal. But the cause there would be individual officers’ failure to follow the law — not defects in the written directives under review or the procedures they incorporate.”
U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins, a Barack Obama appointee, issued a dissent and said Make the Road New York was entitled to a stay because they adequately showed the new policy violated due process.
The fact that several immigrants had already been wrongfully deported, despite their continuous presence in the country, makes clear that the government’s procedures did not afford immigrants a meaningful opportunity to contest their expedited removal, Wilkins said.
The record shows procedures do not require immigration officers to ask an individual when they entered the country or to advise them that expedited removal only applies to those present for less than two years.
“A procedure that can result in persons being deported pursuant to the expedited removal statute without even being asked how long they have been in the country might satisfy due process for persons encountered at the border, but it is woefully inadequate for persons encountered in the interior of the country,” Wilkins wrote.
Rao, also a Trump appointee, wrote her own concurring opinion to note that Make the Road New York’s lawsuit should have been immediately dismissed because Congress left expedited removal policies to the executive branch’s discretion and courts could not review those decisions.
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alternet-no lnx
Federalist Society judges are acting badly, again
Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society (Image via Screengrab / CBS News)
Eric SegallMay 10, 2024
Editor’s note: The following first appeared in Dorf on Law.
Many of the judges selected by Leonard Leo and Don McGahn during the Trump years have been acting very badly. A little over a year ago, I documented this terrible behavior by discussing many different judges. For example, Justin Walker was only 37 when he was nominated to be a federal trial judge despite absolutely no trial experience. What Walker possessed were ties to conservative groups, including the Federalist Society. Less than one year later, he was confirmed as a judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
In his brief time as a district court judge, Walker issued a decision in a case involving covid restrictions and prayers on Easter Sunday that reads "less like a judicial decision and more like a screed against Democrats published in an outlet like Breitbart." The first seven pages of the opinion rant about Christians and other religious groups suffering major persecution throughout the ages. The last lines of his opinion speak for themselves: "Christ’s sacrifice isn’t about the logic of this world. Nor is their Easter Sunday celebration. The reason they will be there for each other and their Lord is the reason they believe He was and is there for us. For them, for all believers, it isn’t a matter of reason; finally, it’s a matter of love."
In between these odes to religion, Walker decided to name a bunch of prominent Democrats who long ago belonged to the KKK. There is no connection between that list and any issue in the case. Walker's reward for all this religious and political posturing, as mentioned above, was a promotion to the Court of Appeals.
In that post from a year ago, I also discussed Judge James Ho's decision not to hire graduates of Yale Law School as his clerks. His reasons were quite obscure, centering around, I really don't know, maybe Yale is just too liberal a place for him. I summarized that incident as follows:
Ho was under no obligation to hire Yale clerks in the first place, so why make such a public fuss and call for other federal judges to join the "boycott?" One theory is that he is auditioning for the Supreme Court. Another theory is that he just likes publicity. But the theory does not matter. Except to the extent that actual cases before him sometimes call for judgments that are as much political as legal--which is substantially less frequently for a lower court judge than for the Supreme Court--Judge Ho has no business getting involved in culture wars and taking obvious political sides. To do so is inappropriate for a sitting federal judge.
Well, Judge Ho is back at it again. On Monday, he and 12 other Trump/Leo/McGahn Federalist Society judges sent a letter to the president of Columbia University saying they will no longer hire law clerks who attend Columbia either as an undergraduate or a law student. Again, the reasoning of the boycott is quite obscure but has something to do with vague and unsubstantiated charges of viewpoint discrimination (totally undocumented) and other aspects of how Columbia has handled the student protests over Gaza.
As an aside, it's worth noting that the letter makes various factual assertions, some of which are highly contestable and others which are flatly wrong. For example, the letter concludes by citing a supposed precedent, stating that "Justice William Brennan refused to hire law clerks from Harvard Law School because he disliked criticisms of the Supreme Court by some of its faculty."
But that's nonsense, as Judge Ho and his buddies could have discovered by looking at a list of Justice Brennan's clerks. They would have then realized that from 1956 to 1965, Justice Brennan hired clerks only from Harvard; thereafter, he hired from a variety of schools, including from Harvard in most years. The tiny kernel of truth in this mostly false retelling is that for a short period of time Justice Brennan apparently was angry at Harvard over personal matters, but he nevertheless consistently hired Harvard graduates throughout his career. But why let facts get in the way of a good rant?
As for the letter's announcement of the boycott itself, again, these judges do not have to hire any Columbia graduates or any other graduates and probably can choose clerks based on viewpoint discrimination. Therefore, the judges' desire to go public must be for some reason separate from their hiring practices. That being the case, it is obvious that federal judges should not involve themselves in social, cultural and political disputes separate from their case-deciding function. If you want to publicly speak and rant about the pressing and controversial issues of the day, which is all this letter was, do not accept a federal judgeship. It really is that simple.
Additionally, the public airing of this grievance by judges is terrible on its own terms, but you do not have to believe me. That bleeding heart liberal Eugene Volokh said that:
We shouldn't threaten innocent neutrals as a means of influencing the culpable. Columbia students aren't the ones who set Columbia policy. They may disagree with that policy, or they may not know enough about the subject to have a view ... They shouldn't be held responsible for what Columbia does, and they shouldn't be retaliated against as a means of trying to pressure Columbia to change.
Eugene also makes the point that we normally reject guilt by association: "We may refuse to hire people who do various bad things, but we shouldn't refuse to hire people who are friends with those people, or who belong to the same groups as those people."
Imagine blaming a lone undergrad or law student for the policies implemented by university officials the students have absolutely no control over. Such a "guilt by association" tactic would be terrible if implemented by a private firm, much less by federal judges.
But maybe guilt by association is exactly the point that these Federalist Society Judges are trying to make by this and the other political stunts I documented in my blog post a year ago. It appears that many (certainly not all) of the judges appointed during the Trump Administration believe that all things secular and liberal are bad, and these judges want the whole world to know that either because they, like Judge Walker, want promotions or they simply want to "own the libs." Both of those reasons are, of course, unseemly and just plain wrong.
It is terrible that federal judges have life tenure and can only be impeached for committing high crimes and misdemeanors. But at least for most of our history, they stayed out of the political wars occurring outside their judicial jurisdictions. But, and this really is not a surprise, these Federalist Society judges feel license to stir up trouble, make controversial public statements, and most recently get in the middle of the terrifyingly hard issues raised by the campus protests relating to the Middle East crisis.
These thirteen judges are acting like immature and hormonal teenagers believing that the world does and should revolve around them and their daily need to unleash terror on those they dislike. Most teens grow out of that particular mindset, but not so for these and many other Federalist Society federal judges. For them, public outbursts of anger and bitterness towards the left are more than fair game; they lead to rewards and promotions. And that is what happens when the leaders of the Federalist Society get to choose our nation's judges.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/chief-justice-roberts-in-the-hot-seat-over-mcconnells-court-packing-scheme/
chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Sri Srinivasan, has requested an inquiry into whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and retired Judge Thomas B. Griffith engineered the latter’s retirement so McConnell could install a protégé. Srinivasan has asked Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to assign the inquiry to another circuit.
This comes as advocacy group Demand Justice calls for a delay in the confirmation hearing of Judge Justin Walker, a former intern of McConnell’s and an extreme partisan who was a fixture on Fox News defending now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his show-hearings.“Justin Walker’s nomination was already controversial, but this emerging investigation means an even darker cloud is hanging over his appointment,” Demand Justice founder Brian Fallon said in a statement released following the announcement of the inquiry. Walker’s nomination is controversial because he is not just an extreme partisan but is so woefully inexperienced in conducting law that the American Bar Association deemed him unqualified for the job McConnell handed to him last fall, on the district court where he now serves.
“The hearing on Walker’s nomination should not go forward until we know the truth about what ethical lines Mitch McConnell crossed to get Walker this seat,” Fallon continued. “At the very least, McConnell should come clean about whether and when he contacted Judge Thomas Griffith prior to his sudden retirement.”
McConnell’s court packing efforts have made news before, including his campaign of leaning on Republican federal judges to get them to retire so he can install very young and extreme partisans in their seats. McConnell and Trump have already filled more than one-quarter of the appeals court seats, but McConnell won’t rest until he’s got the maximum possible, even if that means prying out Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II-appointed judges.
Griffith is a former Senate legal counsel nominated to the appeals court in 2004 by President George W. Bush. Neither he nor McConnell will say whether he is among the judges subject to the pressure campaign led by McConnell. The D.C. Court of Appeals is the second highest court in the nation. It’s the key court for deciding cases relating to the constitutionality of federal rules and regulations and thus the reach of government. It provides a stepping stone both to Supreme Court seats and for some of the most important cases to reach the Supreme Court. Stacking it is as critical to McConnell’s extremist government coup as is stacking the Supreme Court.
“The coordinated manner of Majority Leader McConnell’s involvement in the judges’ decision-making is quite unprecedented and raises significant ethical questions for the judges who heed his advice,” Demand Justice said in its letter requesting an investigation. A “thorough inquiry into the judge’s announcement and scheduled retirement, including when and how the decision to retire was made, and with whose input, is crucial.” Judge Srinivasan apparently is concerned enough to request the inquiry.
“The organization’s request for an inquiry concerns the decision of a judge of this court to retire from service and the resulting creation of a vacancy on this court, which would be filled by a future colleague on this court,” Srinivasan wrote. He added that he made this ruling ruling without “any inquiry by this court into the statements contained in the unverified correspondence or the questions posited by the organization in the correspondence about the possibility of judicial misconduct.” The judge said he was making the ruling public since he wanted to make sure it was clear the concerns about McConnell’s actions were not being ignored, because the questions brought up by Demand Progress “about the possibility of judicial misconduct have been reported in various major news outlets.”
Walker’s hearing is scheduled for Wednesday. It seems unlikely that Moscow Mitch or Leningrad Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, will decide to postpone the hearing out of concern about appearances of extreme partisanship. Because it’s McConnell and Graham we’re talking about. Once again, the ball in is Chief Justice John Roberts’ court.
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THIS WEEK, Mitch McConnell is bringing the Senate back in session ... no, it's not to pass emergency coronavirus relief ... it's to ram through the confirmation of some of Trump's most unfit judicial nominees yet!
Justin Walker -- a Brett Kavanaugh protégé who not only is a right-wing extremist, but also severely lacks experience and has been rated "not qualified" by the American Bar Association (ABA) -- will be considered by the Judiciary Committee in a matter of days for his nomination to the powerful DC Circuit Court of Appeals. ALL senators need to know that Americans are paying attention and we REJECT Trump and McConnell's efforts to rubber-stamp unfit judges, especially during the current crisis.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/mitch-mcconnell-is-still-refusing-to-rein-in-trump-and-americans-are-paying-the-price-new-yorker
no lnx
Mitch McConnell is still refusing to rein in Trump — and Americans are paying the price: New Yorker
Written by Sarah K. Burris / Raw Story April 13, 2020
New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer explained that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is enabling President Donald Trump’s bad behavior at a time that Americans need a leader the most.
“On Thursday, March 12th, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, could have insisted that he and his colleagues work through the weekend to hammer out an emergency aid package addressing the coronavirus pandemic,” she wrote. “Instead, he recessed the Senate for a long weekend and returned home to Louisville, Kentucky. McConnell, a seventy-eight-year-old Republican who is about to complete his sixth term as a senator, planned to attend a celebration for a protégé, Justin Walker, a federal judge who was once his Senate intern. McConnell has helped install nearly two hundred conservatives as judges; stocking the judiciary has been his legacy project.”
Democrats were working with the White House’s Steve Mnuchin, and McConnell was needed for the next step. He was cracking jokes at an event halfway across the country during the crisis. It took McConnell 11 days to come up with a bill.
“McConnell, who is known as one of the wiliest politicians in Washington, soon reframed the narrative as a personal success story,” The New Yorker said. “In Kentucky, where he is running for reëlection, he launched a campaign ad about the bill’s passage, boasting, ‘One leader brought our divided country together.’ At the same time, he attacked the Democrats, telling a radio host that the impeachment of Trump had ‘diverted the attention of the government’ when the epidemic was in its early stages. In fact, several senators—including Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, and Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut—had raised alarms about the virus nearly two months before the Administration acted, whereas Trump had told reporters around the same time that he was “not concerned at all.” And on February 27th, some three weeks after the impeachment trial ended, McConnell had defended the Administration’s response, accusing Democrats of ‘performative outrage’ when they demanded more emergency funding.”
The New Yorker explained that McConnell’s worship for Trump is really a kind of “cynical political genius.” He’s both protecting his caucus and covering himself in a deeply red state where Trump is more popular than even he is.
“When the pandemic took hold, the President’s standing initially rose in national polls, and McConnell and Trump will surely both take credit for the aid package in the coming months,” said the report. “Yet, as covid-19 decimates the economy and kills Americans across the nation, McConnell’s alliance with Trump is looking riskier. Indeed, some critics argue that McConnell bears a singular responsibility for the country’s predicament. They say that he knew from the start that Trump was unequipped to lead in a crisis, but because the President was beloved by the Republican base, McConnell protected him.”
The report recalled that McConnell even blocked witnesses at the impeachment trial, which basically guaranteed that Trump would remain in office.’
“There are a lot of people disappointed in him. He could have mobilized the Senate. But the Republican Party changed underneath him, and he wanted to remain in power,”said David Hawpe, the former editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Columnist and journalism professor Al Cross called McConnell’s partnership with Trump “the most important political relationship in the country.”
According to The New Yorker, Cross “had hoped that McConnell would push back against Trump. After all, past Republicans have crossed party lines to defend democracy—from censuring Joe McCarthy to forcing the resignation of President Richard Nixon.”’
“But Trump and McConnell have come to understand each other,” Cross said. “The President needs him to govern. McConnell knows that if their relationship fell apart it would be a disaster for the Republican majority in the Senate. They’re very different in many ways, but fundamentally they’re about the same thing—winning.”
The extensive piece goes on to explain even more ways in which McConnell has sold his soul in further efforts to protect himself in what will likely be one of the most difficult elections of his career. Democrats are still fighting it out in a primary election, but the race has already seen more donations than any other in the country.As the coronavirus creeps into the southern states, McConnell could end up in a desperate situation explaining why he hasn’t done enough while his state is suffering.