Behind two high-profile deportation cases, a legal crisis grows
Consider This from NPR
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4.1 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
One case involves President Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act, the 18th-century wartime law, to deport migrants without due process.
The other is about the wrongful deportation, also without due process, of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and the government's refusal to bring him back to the U.S.
The growing conflicts point to a potential constitutional crisis, where the president openly defies the country's highest court — or at least, as one legal scholar maintains, a crisis at the Supreme Court.
Our guest is University of Virginia professor Amanda Frost, who specializes in immigration and citizenship law.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A cartoon this week in the New Yorker magazine shows a reporter standing before the steps of the Supreme Court. |
| 0:07.1 | Into her microphone, she intones, today the Supreme Court is expected to rule in the case of people versus Guy who will ignore the ruling. |
| 0:16.7 | Like all political cartoons, it's designed to capture a moment. |
| 0:20.7 | And the moment in which we find ourselves presents a mounting number of legal cases |
| 0:25.8 | where the Trump administration appears to be avoiding or ignoring court orders. |
| 0:36.2 | Last Friday, aboard a noisy Air Force One, President Trump told reporters, I respect the Supreme Court. |
| 0:43.9 | Well, the Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to, quote, facilitate the return of a man named Kilmar Abrago Garcia to the U.S. |
| 0:53.0 | He was the government acknowledges wrongfully deported to a mega prison in El Salvador last month, |
| 1:00.4 | despite legal protection which was supposed to prevent this. |
| 1:03.6 | But this week, the Trump administration made its position clear it was not bringing Abrago Garcia back. |
| 1:10.8 | And senior officials doubled down on the claim that |
| 1:13.8 | he's a dangerous gang member. He was illegally in our country. He had been illegally in our country. |
| 1:19.0 | Who again is a member of MS-13, which is I'm sure you understand, rapes little girls, |
| 1:25.3 | murderous women, murder's children, is engaged in the most |
| 1:28.0 | barbaric activities in the world, and I can promise you if he was your neighbor, you would |
| 1:31.4 | move right away. |
| 1:32.3 | White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Attorney General Pam Bondi, speaking from |
| 1:37.3 | the Oval Office this week alongside President Trump and El Salvador's president, Naiboukele. |
| 1:44.0 | It's worth mentioning lawyers for Abrago-Garcia |
| 1:47.2 | deny any affiliation with the gang MS-13, and note their client is accused of being part of an |
| 1:53.8 | MS-13 click in New York, where he has never lived. Well, this is the big lie being perpetrated by |
| 2:00.0 | the president, his administration, and some Republicans in Congress. |
... |
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