In a twist, Donald Trump’s DOJ give up in the court, leaving judges speechless

President Trump’s administration has recently started admitting to judges that it simply can’t defend some of its decisions to detain immigrants. Justice Department lawyers have essentially thrown in the towel, declining to challenge detainees’ claims for release or a bond hearing. According to Politico, they’re telling judges things like “do not have an opposition argument to present” or admitting they couldn’t find enough information to mount a defense. 

A Justice Department attorney, in response to a lawsuit in Arizona, candidly wrote, “Undersigned counsel was unable to obtain documentation … sufficient to provide factual support for a response.” The attorney then concluded, “Accordingly, [administration officials] do not oppose the Court ordering Petitioner to receive a bond hearing at this time.” 

This is a direct result of Trump’s aggressive mass deportation drive. This effort, combined with the detention of people who have lived peacefully in the U.S. for years, has really overwhelmed the justice system. For months now, federal judges have ruled over 7,000 times that ICE has illegally locked people up without, at the very least, giving them a fair chance to prove they can live safely in the community.

Ah, the plight of the overworked

Many judges have simply rejected the administration’s legal arguments, which often rely on an expansive and frankly unprecedented interpretation of ICE’s power. A problem simply because of ICE’s opinion of constitutional rights. Other times, the administration has just dropped the ball entirely, missing deadlines or failing to respond to emergency lawsuits. This has, predictably, led judges to rule in the detainees’ favor. 

Now, administration lawyers are just giving up. Justice Department offices nationwide are absolutely swamped with emergency immigration cases, constantly in triage mode and struggling to keep up. They’ve repeatedly told judges that getting information from their ICE counterparts to defend detention decisions is a huge uphill battle. 

Judge Gary Klausner was understandably floored by the lawsuit of Iranian woman, who lived in the US for 26 years after an incomplete detention order. The administration had “no opposition argument to present.” Klausner remarked, “It appears that Respondents arrested a chronically ill, 70-year-old woman… then kept her in detention for months without sufficient medical care—and they do not have any argument to offer to even try to justify these actions.” 

This pattern is playing out in dozens of cases, especially in California and Arizona, where ICE holds thousands of detainees. While the administration has often claimed its deportation efforts target “the worst of the worst” criminals, the truth is that the majority of those facing detention and deportation proceedings have no criminal records at all.

This whole situation has courts understandably chafing at the often-cursory way the Justice Department tries to defend these mass detention cases. A judge noted, “The Court recognizes that the absence of a response may reflect broader resource constraints.” However, he quickly added, “But that does not excuse the failure to, at the least, explain an inability to timely respond or seek an extension.”