President Trump has accelerated a multipronged, methodically planned strategy to push the Supreme Court to bless his power to deport vastly more people with vastly fewer judicial restraints, officials tell Axios.
Trump advisers see at least five questions they hope the Supreme Court will answer.
The plan revolves around two cases and obscure laws that have ignited lawsuits and sent shockwaves through the immigration system over successive weekends:
--Using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act o deport accused Venezuelan gang members without immigration hearings. Nearly 140 were flown out of the U.S. on Saturday in a controversial operation that left a federal judge fuming that his order to turn the plane around had been ignored.
-- Using the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act to detain pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who helped lead protests at Columbia University. The administration says the courts have little say over Secretary of State Marco Rubio's determination that Khalil should be deported as a national security risk for protesting against U.S. foreign policy.
The legal questions at issue include:
--Does a peacetime president have the right to deport noncitizens under the war-time Alien Enemies Act — even if there's no declared war against a foreign adversary?
--Does a single federal judge have the power to block a president's deportation program nationwide?
--Can that judge's order extend to international waters and demand that a plane full of deportees turn around mid-flight?
--Does a green card holder like Khalil have speech rights that protect him from deportation? Or can the secretary of state unilaterally declare his speech "adverse" to U.S. foreign policy interests because the government alleges it aligns with the terror group Hamas?
--Can the secretary of state's power to deport immigrants based on foreign-policy concerns extend to so many student visa holders that some colleges won't be able to admit foreign-exchange students?
"When you broaden that concept," said a Justice Department official, "every single noncitizen who actively supports Hamas is subject to a determination by Secretary Rubio that they lose their status — and become exactly like Khalil and are immediately deportable."
The official said, "We really do want to push the court — ultimately the Supreme Court — to take a stand. ... We're trying to get clarity. And we're not putting all eggs in one basket. It's why we're seeing all efforts to remove people."
Civil libertarians are horrified by what they see as a large-scale assault on free speech and due process by an administration that's bent on granting authoritarian-like powers to Trump.
The high court typically has tried to avoid immigration disputes, but Trump's team aims to force its hand. "We have the law, and we have the numbers on the court," a Trump adviser said. "We've always known this is where all this ends up."
U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts inserted himself into the political line of fire Tuesday, rebuking Trump and others after they called for the impeachment of District Judge James Boasberg for his rulings aimed at delaying the deportation of the Venezuelans.
The episode gave some headline-hungry House Republicans another chance to show their fealty to Trump: They promptly proposed to impeach Boasberg, a measure doomed to fail in the divided House.
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