The New Yorker:

A look at the agency’s astonishing record of defying court orders, and what the judiciary might do to respond.

By Isaac Chotiner

Last week, the top federal judge in Minnesota accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice) of violating nearly a hundred court orders in the month of January. In a ruling that was part of a contempt case involving Todd Lyons, the acting director of ice, the judge, Patrick J. Schiltz, wrote, “ICE has every right to challenge the orders of this Court, but, like any litigant, ICE must follow those orders unless and until they are overturned or vacated.” ice, Schiltz added, “is not a law unto itself.” The ruling marks perhaps the most serious turn in an ongoing battle between federal courts and the White House, with the Trump Administration often appearing to blatantly ignore court orders, or to comply with them only after being repeatedly warned to do so.

I recently spoke by phone with Ryan Goodman, who is a law professor at N.Y.U., the co-editor-in-chief of the law-and-policy journal Just Security, and a former special counsel at the Department of Defense during the Obama Administration. He and his colleagues at Just Security have been cataloguing examples of the Trump Administration’s defiance of court orders since the start of the President’s second term. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what the Trump Administration is trying to accomplish with its disregard for the judiciary, the emergence of an alternative legal system for ice detainees, and the Supreme Court’s reluctance to rein in Trump.

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