Tren de Aragua is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization from Venezuela, with ties to the Venezuelan far-left totalitarian government. According to NBC, in an article that astonishingly tries to be sympathetic toward the gang, the gang’s “signature enterprise is a model of sex trafficking that uses migration as a coercive weapon.”
But aside from sex trafficking, the gang has been involved in U.S. police shootings and drug smuggling, and it made the news for taking over a whole apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado. In Aurora, the gang was seen openly carrying assault weapons, residents lived in fear, and local officials seemed powerless — until ICE carried out a raid and arrested 100 members in the first month of the newly-elected Trump administration.
Most infamously, it was a Tren de Aragua gang member who raped and killed nursing student Laken Riley, while she was jogging on the University of Georgia campus. Tren de Aragua is only here because of the millions of illegal migrants that flooded in under the Biden administration (nearly a million persons from Venezuela alone).
The Trump administration is trying to undo the damage. Last weekend, the administration shipped out 238 Tren de Aragua members, along with 21 MS-13 gang members, to a supermax prison in El Salvador. The administration is citing the Alien Enemies Act, which allows a president to deport noncitizens during wartime. (No we aren’t in an official state of war with Venezuela, but Tren de Aragua has been labeled a foreign terror organization, and the Supreme Court has ruled that deportations under the act are not subject to judicial review.)
Judge Boasberg Wants Venezuelan Terrorists to Stay in America
Enter Judge James E. Boasberg, who sat on the infamous Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and imposed only probation on a top FBI lawyer — Kevin Clinesmith — who doctored an email so that the intelligence agencies could spy on the 2016 Trump campaign. Hours after the deportation flights departed, Boasberg issued an order demanding the flights be turned around. The White House said that since the flight was over international waters at the time the ruling came in, the judge’s order could be ignored.
Boasberg then demanded access to highly classified flight information — which the White House should and will refuse to give. The spat is ongoing. Trump has reacted by calling for Boasberg’s impeachment, and articles have been filed in the U.S. House. But this is only one example of many.
Another D.C. judge and Canadian citizen, Amir Hatem Mahdy Ali, ordered Trump’s freeze on $2 billion of foreign aid — over fraud and terrorism concerns — illegal. The $2 billion must go out anyway, in contravention of the president’s foreign policy. At the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s leftists and refused to strike down the lower court’s order.
Theodore Chuang, an Obama appointee, ruled the government must restore nearly all of USAID’s operations. Another federal judge has blocked the administration from terminating EPA climate change grants to Citibank, an international bank. Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee to the federal bench, ordered the U.S. military to continue enlisting individuals with gender dysphoria.
These nationwide injunctions are a relatively new problem. As Center for Renewing America CEO Eric Teetsel noted, “67% of all injunctions this century came against President Trump in his first term and 92% were imposed by Democrat-appointed judges.”
But there are deeper problems here than nationwide injunctions. Chief Justice Roberts, in a highly irregular move, openly criticized the move to impeach Boasberg. GOP Sen. Mike Lee wrote on X in response: “How dare he tell Congress it can’t impeach bad judges?” It’s important to note that Roberts could have put a stop to much of this weeks ago by disallowing Judge Ali from blocking Trump’s cut to foreign aid. Instead, Roberts (and Barrett) emboldened the activist judiciary.
New Territory
The truth is that we are in completely new territory. Lacking control of any branch of government, the left has committed itself to tying up the Trump administration for years in the courts — thus the unprecedented use of nationwide injunctions by leftist judges. This is blatantly anti-democratic, attempting to place policy decisions in the hands of an unelected cabal of judges.
But that’s not the worst of it. Days ago, the sister of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was targeted with a bomb threat at her home in South Carolina. Leftists have committed to harassing the conservative justices and have protested outside of justices’ homes. A man — who was obviously influenced by Democrats’ deranged and threatening rhetoric — attempted to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
There’s absolutely no way these tactics aren’t meant to influence decision-making. And there’s no way that this pressure, whether because of fear for themselves or their families, doesn’t enter judges’ minds. Frankly, the system is irreparably broken because the left will no longer play by the rules. The only similar time in American history was the pre-Civil War period, when a sizeable group of white Southerners decided they would win at all costs — and would burn the system down if they didn’t win.
The American Judicial System Was Already Broken
The judicial system the left is warping further was already broken. The 20th century is littered with decisions that removed the people’s right to decide key issues at the ballot box. Judges and administrators invented affirmative action and kept it going for decades. In other instances, courts tied policymakers’ hands and created nightmarish, unforeseen problems.
Reno v. Flores disallowed migrant children being detained at the border beyond a certain period. Because children couldn’t be detained long-term, either adults and children would be released into the U.S. — meaning adults would bring children on a dangerous journey as tickets into America — or children and adults had to be separated for a time, pending judicial review of the adults’ asylum claims. Judges then created a nightmarish choice between child separation and child trafficking, only solved by the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.
In the late 1990s, Congress passed and the president signed laws meant to keep children from accessing internet pornography, remove pornography from public library computers, and ban virtual child pornography. The Supreme Court struck these laws down.
The worst example is Roe and its aftermath. Because now-dead unelected judges deemed Roe such a foundational constitutional right, no regulations on abortion facilities were allowed whatsoever for decades. Buildings weren’t up to general code. Basic cleanliness standards were not followed. Little body parts were run down the kitchen sink disposal. This period of jurisprudence is entirely responsible for tragedies like Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s “house of horrors.”
Americans have done much to drag ourselves to hell over the last 50 years, but judges have often pulled us there kicking and screaming. It would be forgiven Americans of the last 50 years if they thought all they could actually decide is tax rates. Despite the Supreme Court overturning bad decisions in recent years, the general trend is still deeply negative and unsustainable — the damage is already done, and no court will repair it.
Break the Shackles of Judicial Tyranny
President Trump is already a historical, once-in-a-lifetime, president. He’s clearly intent on reshaping America for decades to come. The last president like this — FDR — comes to mind. If he lost a ruling that could have plunged the nation into deeper depression, he was prepared to ignore the Supreme Court. The president before FDR who fit the same mold, Abraham Lincoln, was of the same bent. He argued, “If the policy of the government … is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court … the people would have ceased to be their own rulers.” The courts in each of these eras represented the old, broken system that needed to be replaced.
The Boasberg decision and the Tren de Aragua deportation is an opportunity to upend the status quo. Ignoring the courts, at least for the first time, on a cultural or economic issue would likely end badly for President Trump. But Boasberg has given Trump the perfect test case.
Blatantly ignore the court. Send out another flight of Tren de Aragua members, and tell Boesberg to try and stop it. If the case goes to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court rules against the administration, ignore the Supreme Court. Send another flight, and dare the Supreme Court to stop it. Let them enforce their own ruling.
Let Democrats and D.C. Republicans get on camera and tell the American people why we really should be keeping Tren de Aragua in the U.S., simply because unelected judges say so. Dare them to die on this hill. The country, even many Democrat voters, will side with Trump. And we’ll start to break the chains of judicial tyranny.
This individual is granted anonymity since publishing an article on The Federalist would credibly threaten close personal relationships, their safety, or their jobs. We verify the identities of those who publish anonymously with The Federalist.
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