Probable cause to hold Trump admin in contempt, judge says
A federal district judge says there is probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt of court over deportations.
I once helped deport a man.
The man deported was an actual crook ― not someone who co-wrote an op-ed in a student newspaper, or who helped organize protests against indiscriminate attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, or who was going to an interview to become a citizen of our great country, or some guy apparently wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey shipped out of the country wrongly (as President Donald Trump’s administration acknowledged) ― no, this guy stole a couple thousand dollars from us, and victimized an untold number of others as well.
It was the 1980s. This guy ran an elaborate mail and retail theft ring. He and others he recruited got jobs at convenience stores, and stole the stores’ check cashing stamps along with promotional flyers. Then he and others he hired, sometimes homeless folks, went through neighborhoods around metro Detroit posting the flyers while stealing mail. We had our monthly checks heading out to pay the bills, innocently, though stupidly, waiting in our mail slot. The crook’s gang nabbed them, endorsed them with the stolen cashing stamps (or scribbles intended to replicate my distinguished autograph), took them to a bank ― on a Friday when banks were mobbed cashing paychecks ― and collected the loot.
Finally, our guy was stopped for a minor traffic violation, and a bunch of warrants popped up. He was arrested, tried, found guilty. We were asked to provide a victim statement (which my wife did) and he was sentenced to a longish jail term.
And, we learned, ordered to be deported to Lebanon when released from prison. We were surprised he was being deported. He had harmed more folks than just us, but we had a pang of guilt for his family.
‘L’etat, c’est moi’
Still, this guy was a textbook example of one who should be deported: an actual criminal, actively committing crimes. I never knew if he was legally in the United States, but I do know he was given due process of law and represented by legal counsel before being convicted and subject to deportation.
He was not subject to the whims of someone who believes “l’etat, c’est moi.”
He was not like Rumeysa Ozturk, a graduate student at Tufts University ― on a lawful student visa ― stopped by unidentified individuals (“Let me call the police,” she can be heard saying in a video, then told by the guy handcuffing her, “We are the police”) for writing an op-ed in The Tufts Daily protesting university administration policy on investing in Israeli companies (the op-ed she co-wrote with three other students is easily found online).
Nor like Mahmoud Khalil, also here legally, hauled in for helping organize demonstrations protesting the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in Gaza.
Nor like Mohsen Mahdawi, going to an interview to prepare to become a citizen of the U.S.
And certainly not like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom a court had already held ruled could not be deported back to El Salvador, but snatched wrongly – as the Trump Administration initially acknowledged ― deported, and is now being held in direct violation of court orders that he be returned. (The Trump administration says they cannot get him back and have no intention of doing so. Yet in 2018, the first Trump administration acknowledged it had wrongly deported Muneer Subaihani, who had Michigan connections, and did get him back. But, of course, in his first administration, Trump had not made retribution a primary initiative.)
An instrument of tyranny
There is no verifiable evidence any of these individuals violated federal law. And anybody in the U.S. gets to enjoy the rights guaranteed under the Constitution, such as free speech and freedom to peaceably protest.
Which makes their detentions and deportations far more disturbing than the arrest and deportation of our mail thief: No crime was needed to seize them; they were seized, frankly, for no more reason than “we don’t like you.”
In so doing, the Trump Administration has resurrected one of the great instruments of tyranny: “lettres de cachet,” an order from the king, usually used to order someone’s imprisonment. Such “lettres” were among the many issues causing the French Revolution. They historically stemmed from the concept of “Rex solutas est a legibus,” or the “King is released from the law” and able to do whatsoever he ― or she ― chooses. You didn’t like someone, didn’t matter why, the king would issue an order for your arrest.
Clearly Trump is behaving as though he is above the law, and not just on immigration. His non-stop executive orders and memos are his commands, dealing with everything from showerhead water pressure ― to wash his regal hair ― to promoting coal mining ― he is silent thus far on black lung disease ― to issuing his own requirements for voting.
He has ordered investigations of people he doesn’t like. He signed presidential memos demanding investigations of two of his first-term officials, Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs. Their offenses? Taylor wrote a book about the Trump administration Trump didn’t like. And Krebs, who was a cyber-security expert, enraged Trump by saying the 2020 election was the most secure in history and that Trump … um … lost that election.
The actions taken against law firms who represented Trump’s opponents? Attempts to legally legitimize his pique. Already 70 international students in Michigan have lost their visas ― none so far from Hillsdale College, but it’s early yet ― for no as yet specified reason. Trump is threatening to bar all international students at Harvard, on what legal authority? And forget claims that moves against universities are due to antisemitism; I suspect he hates academia because most academics opposed him.
Is anyone safe?
With Executive Orders and Memos as Trump’s “lettres de cachet,” is anyone in this great land safe?
Decades ago, Mike Rogers, running again for the U.S. Senate in Michigan and once an FBI agent, told this reporter that with so many laws on the books, any cop can instantly find any plausible reason to arrest you. No comfort there.
Trump wants to deport U.S. citizens. Oh, they’re prisoners? They’re still U.S. citizens and not subject to deportation. Except Trump wants it, so “Oui, Monsieur President.”
Hey! Why not deport anyone arrested but free on bail? Why not deport anyone who has been just plain fined, not even arrested? Suddenly parking tickets take on greater menace.
Tie all this to Trump’s Executive Order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” In that Trump challenges the idea of birthright citizenship, arguing ― ridiculously ― that it was never intended to “universally” guarantee birthright citizenship because not everyone in the U.S. is subject to the “jurisdiction of the United States.”
C’mon. Anybody physically in the United States is subject to U.S. jurisdiction. If you go into Canada (presuming our maligned Canadian friends will admit you) you are subject to the Crown’s jurisdiction (as a friend many years ago learned, smoking a joint in Windsor’s Dieppe Park). Break a law in the U.S., you’ll quickly see whose jurisdiction you’re under.
Meaning? Well, if Trump gets away with it, you are a citizen of the United States only if Donald Trump so decrees. Otherwise, better learn whatever language your grandparents and great grandparents, because you might be headed there.
Shredding norms
Am I hyperventilating? I hope so. But we are quickly seeing virtually every norm we have known in this country shredded by executive decree, with a whiny, compliant Congress and, God knows, still enough supporters cheering him on. Possibly the only thing that could contain him is a collapsing economy, and even he may try to prevent that, allowing him to continue issuing his daily disasters.
Again, it comes down to We the People, not Oui, Monsieur President, to maintain our Republic.
Otherwise, if my mail thief is still with us, he might be sitting in a café somewhere in Lebanon saying: “Boy, I was lucky compared to them today.”
Free Press contributing columnist John Lindstrom has covered Michigan politics for 50 years. He retired as publisher of Gongwer, a Lansing news service, in 2019. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it online and in print.
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