Judge Smacks Down Trump Order With Brutal History Lesson

A federal judge in New York became the second judge to smack down Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to round up immigrants and deport them without any form of due process. But the judge took things a step further this time by giving the entire Trump administration a brutal history lesson about the Act and how it has been abused in the past. The lesson likely won’t stick with Trump, but it’ll be a hard ruling to get overturned. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A second federal judge this week has now ruled against Donald Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly round up migrants here in the United States, and of course deny them their due process rights. Now, about a week or two ago, we did have a federal judge in Colorado, was the first judge that basically temporarily said, no, you can't do this because the Alien Enemies Act does not apply here. However, that case is, of course, still pending. This judge was far more harsh and far more concise with the fact that you can't do this. And in smacking down Donald Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act, the judge not only offered valid legal reasons, but also decided to give Donald Trump a very brutal historical constitutional lesson. First and foremost, the judge said that there's no war invasion or predatory incursion, which of course, the Trump administration has suggested justify his use of the act, and the judge went on.

Judge Alvin Hellerstein said this, this nation was founded on these self-evident truths that all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our Constitution embodies these truths in a limited government of enumerated powers in its system of checks and balances, separating the executive, legislative and judicial branches, and in its guarantee that neither citizen nor alien be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Yet in March, 2025, more than 200 aliens were removed from this country to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center, sea Cot with faint hope of process or return. The sweep for removal is ongoing extending to the litigants in this case, and others thwarted only by order of this and other federal courts.

Now, that may not seem like a whole lot, you know, to you. You may think like, okay, well yeah, he's just kind of reading the Constitution here. But what that judge was doing was not just giving Donald Trump a history lesson. It wasn't just giving him a lesson in the Constitution. The judge was basically citing the Constitution to let any future appellate court understand the fact that overturning this ruling is to effectively overturn the US Constitution, which you can't do. That's what's so smart about it. When you are able to literally include parts of the Constitution, parts of the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence in your ruling, it's almost impossible for those appellate courts to find

A way to say, no, that's, that's not true. This is wrong. No, that judge beat Donald Trump down intelligently, historically, constitutionally, this might be, aside from his criminal convictions, the worst judicial beat down that Donald Trump has ever received.