…The government’s argument seems crazy to me because, among other things, it suggests that 6 U.S.C. 279(b)(1)(H) displaces or overrides processes set out in statutes like the TVPRA bsky.app/profile/anna...
Replies
Why is the law always in the way of Stephen Miller’s acute sensibilities for the well-being of children?
sep 1, 2025, 2:12 pm • 1 0 • view
Anna, thank you for your work on this. You must have gotten not much more sleep than the judge. These children desperately need people with a platform like yours sharing their story.
sep 1, 2025, 2:05 pm • 7 0 • view
Judge Sooknanan asked Ensign about this during the hearing and tbh even he seemed reluctant to take the view that the provision he cited overrides all the other statutory protections… He tried to argue that the Title 6 provision is “its own form of protection”?? bsky.app/profile/anna...
sep 1, 2025, 1:41 pm • 185 27 • view
During the hearing yesterday, Ensign said: “This has been done previously. This is not a new use of this authority. Prior Secretaries have done precisely this.” He didn't cite specific examples. What is he talking about? When did prior Secretaries do this? bsky.app/profile/anna...
sep 1, 2025, 6:18 pm • 249 48 • view
"People are saying, many people, with tears in their eyes, are coming up to me and saying ..."
sep 1, 2025, 6:34 pm • 1 0 • view
dunno, if Congress wanted the other statutes to limit the (b) (1) (H) authority wouldn’t they have put something in that provision to limit its use only to appropriate cases? What kind of language might they have used? 🤣🤣🤣
sep 1, 2025, 6:30 pm • 3 0 • view
Is he going to have an opportunity to brief that?
sep 1, 2025, 6:55 pm • 0 0 • view
thanks for covering this so closely. too f'ing much to keep track of, and so much of it is so brutal. appreciate your work!
sep 1, 2025, 10:04 pm • 0 0 • view
I'm just spitballing here but maybe he's thinking of Elian Gonzales? Equally likely he's just, you know, lying.
sep 1, 2025, 6:31 pm • 54 0 • view
Are we completely positive. None of these children are legal citizens?
sep 1, 2025, 9:34 pm • 0 0 • view
Ensign is a shitheel douche kazoo.
sep 1, 2025, 6:34 pm • 0 0 • view
Didn’t Gonzales go through an entire appeals process??
sep 1, 2025, 6:35 pm • 35 0 • view
I think he was reunited with his father *in the U.S.* at one point, but he didn’t leave the country until the asylum/legal process was exhausted And I have no idea if the Secretary of Homeland Security relied on 279(b)(1)(H) at any point during all of that
sep 1, 2025, 6:37 pm • 37 3 • view
If I remember correctly Gonzalez was reunited with his father under a treaty related to adoption and parental rights. His father wanted him back and requested his return. I believe the case was ultimately about parental custody not immigration.
sep 1, 2025, 6:43 pm • 2 0 • view
It was a cluster%^&*. I think they were making a lot of it up as they went along but @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social would know better
sep 1, 2025, 6:40 pm • 26 1 • view
if you wanna feel old look at what gonzales is up to these days
sep 1, 2025, 6:41 pm • 2 0 • view
Teaching National Security Law... With an emphasis on avoiding that pesky "torture" bugaboo. (Probably)
sep 1, 2025, 7:16 pm • 1 0 • view
This is also not one for my knowledge. Certainly, the idea that ORR could independently run its own repatriation service seems wildly wrong. My read of the statue suggests ORR could probably create some kind of voluntary process *in harmony with* Title 8, but not separate and parallel to.
sep 1, 2025, 6:46 pm • 54 3 • view
Thank you, Aaron.
sep 1, 2025, 6:49 pm • 1 0 • view
Also I don’t understand why Ensign kept saying the title 6 provision authorizes the *Secretary of Homeland Security* to repatriate the children (as opposed ORR/HHS). I know ORR said it’s working w/ DHS, but Ensign seemed to suggest that the statute itself vests authority in Noem
sep 1, 2025, 6:53 pm • 73 5 • view
They're hiding something.
sep 1, 2025, 9:44 pm • 0 0 • view
Wish I’d been listening in. I am also confused. I had been under the impression that they were arguing that the OBBBA provision authorizing funding for the removal of UCs who withdraw their applications for admission.
sep 1, 2025, 7:02 pm • 42 4 • view
I didn't hear Ensign cite that. The only legal authority he cited was 6 U.S.C. § 279. He told the judge that it “authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Secretary to reunite children with their parents…This is reuniting children with their parents and guardians, as specifically promoted by Title 6.”
sep 1, 2025, 7:30 pm • 39 3 • view
It was INS back then, DHS didn't exist yet, right?
sep 1, 2025, 6:55 pm • 2 0 • view
Yep. Not until 2001.
sep 1, 2025, 6:58 pm • 2 0 • view
Statute*
sep 1, 2025, 6:49 pm • 3 0 • view
The Elian Gonzalez case was in 1999-2000. The then INS memo was written by Bo Cooper, signed by Doris Meissner. Sec 279 cited by Ensign is part of Homeland Security Act of 2002 transferring care and custody of unaccompanied children from INS to ORR.
sep 1, 2025, 8:12 pm • 2 0 • view
Based on his past performance, I think he's relaying — agency counsel told him this and he has not verified it. Maybe that's lying on his part, but I think it's closer to bullshitting.
sep 1, 2025, 7:01 pm • 4 0 • view
We do see that a lot with DOJ lawyers, even more so recently. They will make a statement with no qualifications as an indisputable fact, when they actually should have said, according to the agency, or, according to my client, or, my understanding is, and then stated the thing.
sep 1, 2025, 7:15 pm • 12 0 • view
And most judges will let them get away with it without any pushback and even get mad at opposing counsel if they argue that this is just a statement of opinion with no backing and refuse to ask for clarification, when one of us mere peasants would be drawn and quartered for doing the same thing.
sep 1, 2025, 7:16 pm • 7 0 • view
I agree, but he says "I've been told" so often in these TRO hearings that it's basically implied top-to-bottom.
sep 1, 2025, 7:35 pm • 1 0 • view
So he throws Noem under the bus when Ensign knows this was a Stephen Miller thing?
sep 1, 2025, 6:37 pm • 1 0 • view
Uniting a particular child with a parent in a foreign country is not authorization to transport entire planes of children to a foreign country and hoping they'll find their parents.
sep 1, 2025, 6:35 pm • 5 0 • view
Ensign's should really just be honest: "How do I say something, your honor, that will allow Stephen Miller to wank to it?"
sep 1, 2025, 2:01 pm • 2 0 • view
At heart isn't it: 1. Trump can do whatever 2. Trump is the government 3. The government can do whatever 4. If #3 = no, see SCOTUS and goto #2
sep 1, 2025, 1:45 pm • 6 1 • view
is there any way that the courts can assign a special master to supervise the DoJ, because the courts are being clogged up with large number of cases based on utterly pretextual legal arguments that no competent attorney would ever advance?
sep 1, 2025, 1:53 pm • 9 0 • view
Waking up this AM and trying to get oriented. Are we still waiting for the DOJ to confirm the return of the final 2 children? Or is it 1?
sep 1, 2025, 2:01 pm • 13 2 • view
2, still waiting
sep 1, 2025, 2:07 pm • 29 3 • view
It makes you wonder where they fuck they were that its taken this long
sep 1, 2025, 2:19 pm • 13 0 • view
Is there anything like Rule 11 sanctions available to the judge?
sep 1, 2025, 2:04 pm • 0 0 • view
i know it’s naive to keep asking WHY, but…WHY? why did they decide to steal CHILDREN from the foster care system (?) and deport them for no clear political goal with no legal basis? is this just what they think fun is like? i know intellectually that the cruelty is the point but christ
sep 1, 2025, 1:37 pm • 7 0 • view
Abrego and these kids were low hanging fruit that wouldn't fight back and wont get you protesting in the streets. Its not about the cruelty, its a (no pun intended) cold calculated effort to slowly turn up the temperature on the pot the plan to boil us in. a lack of empathy rather than active malice
sep 1, 2025, 2:10 pm • 5 1 • view
kids in cages got everyone protesting in the streets last time tho, including tech employees. it seems stupid to go for kids again when that backfired so badly last time.
sep 1, 2025, 2:13 pm • 2 0 • view
WE aren't going to have kids in cages on the nightly news. Last time we had starvation in a country on the scale of Palestine, we had protests. Decades of 'starving kids in africa so eat your bad food'. now the dead aren't on the news, and so americans dont care.
sep 1, 2025, 5:54 pm • 2 0 • view
The reason to deport them in secret as they did is to hide the evidence. Prevent the pushback. stop the public from getting involved. Once they are gone, there won’t be anymore photos of detention camps. They saw the mistake with Abrego and trump 1.
sep 1, 2025, 6:02 pm • 2 0 • view
Did DHS arrange for the children to reunite with family prior to loading them on the planes? I suspect not. Probably just made a deal with the government to accept the flight. Can DHS provide a list of those they contacted, to even ensure the relatives are alive and willing to accept?
sep 1, 2025, 4:25 pm • 2 0 • view
I’m not an immigration expert, but 6 USC § 279 was part of the act creating DHS in 2002, and is a housekeeping section transferring functions previously handled another agency to the ORR (which is part of HHS). It doesn’t create new pathways for removal nor alter the requirements of the TVPA/TVPRA.
sep 1, 2025, 6:28 pm • 1 0 • view
Someone should ask Ensign whether the DOJ has located any of the parents of any of these children. This is human trafficking.
sep 1, 2025, 3:15 pm • 4 0 • view
The statute they’re citing just identifies the responsible department, not the required process. Their argument that this one sentence exempts them from compliance with other statutes could also be used to argue that they can murder the children as long as they send the dead bodies to their parents.
sep 1, 2025, 2:08 pm • 3 0 • view
they are wrong, it does not!
sep 1, 2025, 10:43 pm • 0 0 • view
The standard right wing approach to jurisprudence is that they find some words they like; those are now the only words that matter; no other words matter.
sep 1, 2025, 1:34 pm • 6 0 • view
An unidentified parent?
sep 1, 2025, 4:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Child trafficking must be highly profitable.
sep 1, 2025, 1:31 pm • 3 0 • view
it seems crazy to you, because you can't conceive of the actual pure malice that is motivating these actions. Because we still have courts, those actions still require even the most absurd pretextual legal rationales. But we're talking EVIL, not insanity here.
sep 1, 2025, 1:50 pm • 4 0 • view
I’m not a lawyer, but DOJ arg seems predicated upon an idea of human rights that’s been circulating in RW circles for decades, but pushed hard recently: parental rights above all. See the draft Convention on the Rights of the Family (orig. written by 🇵🇱 Ordo Iuris)
sep 1, 2025, 2:14 pm • 5 0 • view
Parental rights except for reading books and trans kids and …
sep 1, 2025, 2:43 pm • 5 0 • view
Yes. The argument is neither consistent nor made in good faith. It is explicitly patriarchal and actively harmful.
sep 1, 2025, 3:04 pm • 4 0 • view