This is Bloomberg Law with June Grossel from Bloomberg Radio.
President Trump has taken unprecedented steps to fire board members at agencies created by Congress to be independent of the White House. He's fired members of the Federal Trade Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Merit Systems Protection Board, all without cause as required by relevant statutes. All these firings are being challenged
in DC federal courts. Some are at the trial court level, others are at the appellate level, and still others at the Supreme Court. Joining me is Bloomberg Intelligence senior litigation analyst Elliott Stein. Elliott, isn't the same issue that's coming up over and over again in these cases involving firings.
Yeah, exactly. You know, basically whether Humphy's Executor, which is the Supreme Court decision from nineteen thirty five which upheld four cause removal restrictions, still applies, because all these government statutes for all these agencies where the commissioners are being fired have the same or similar four cause removal restrictions.
And so the question is whether you know the Trump administration is arguing that those restrictions are unconstitutional because they impinge on the president's authority to run the executive branch.
And these cases are all in the DC.
Circuit, right exactly. Some of them are still at the trial court level, so d DC, but yes, they're all under the umbrella of the DC Circuit, and some have already started reaching the Supreme Court.
So tell us about the hearing yesterday over the firing of the FTC commissioners.
Yesterday's hearing was at the trial court level. It was before Judge Ali Khan, and you know, it was similar to what we've seen in other cases involving commissioners from other agencies for example ANLRB, the National Labor Relations Board
and the MSPB, the Merit Systems Protection Board. And essentially, the Trump administration is arguing that the four cause removal restrictions that are in the governing statutes are unconstitutional and the president should be able to fire these commissioners at will because they're part of the executive branch and under Article to the president has authority to control the executive branch.
The commissioners obviously take the opposite view and say, well, you know, we have a Supreme Court decision from nineteen thirty five Humphrey's Executor, which upheld four cause removal restrictions, and that decision is still good law. The Supreme Court hasn't overruled it, even though it revisited and interpreted that decision in recent cases involving single director agencies like the CFPB and the FAHFA.
One of these cases actually reached an on bank panel of the DC Circuit, which means the three judge panel ruled in the case and then it was appealed to the full DC Circuit.
Essentially two of the cases, but they've sort of been consolidated. Those are the cases involving the NRB and the MSPB,
the Merit Systems Protection Board. In that case, the trial court Judge Howell said that the four cause removal restrictions are fined their constitutional under Humphrey's Executor and as a result, the termination of the commissioners from those agencies was improper, and so she directed the agencies to reinstate the commissioners their trump administration then went to the DC Circuit, which in the first instance went to a three judge panel,
and the panel, which was comprised of two judges appointed by Republicans and won by a Democrat, essentially said that the trial court's ruling was unlikely to succeed on the merits, and as a result, they put a hold on the
trial court's injunction that would have reinstated the commissioners. Commit missioners then went to the full DC Circuit and requested an ND bound review of that panel decision, and and Bank Court essentially came out the other way from the panel and said that the child Court's injunction to reinstate the commissioners was fine because the commissioners were likely to succeed on the merits. What's interesting is that you know,
these rulings are coming out completely along ideological lines. So you know, I mentioned the three judge panel where you had two judges appointed by Republicans ruling in favor of the Trump administration and one judge appointed by a Democrat
ruling in favor of the commissioners. You had a similar alignment at the en Bank level where you had seven judges appointed by Democrats ruling in favor of the commissioners and four judges appointed by Republicans ruling in favor of the Trump administration.
How are the judges appointed by Republicans get over Humphrey's executor, which is still good law.
Right, So they say the more recent Supreme Court decisions concerning four cause removal restrictions sale a law which concerned the CFPV director and Collins, which concerned the FHFA director, really narrowed the holding of Humphrey's executor, and that the more recent decisions essentially held that four cause removal restrictions are improper for agencies that wield executive power, and that in Humphreys, the FTC at that time didn't really wield
executive power because there was more like a quasi legislative or quasi judicial agency. It basically acted as a legislative aid and didn't quite have the full gamut of powers that it has now. And as a result, you know, these agencies where commissioners are being fired, wield executive power.
And you know two of the hallmarks of executive power or rule making authority and enforcement authority, and most of these agencies have authority, and as a result, they wield executive power and they fall under the President's authority.
So that was the only one that went up to the full DC circuit.
Yes, that's right. Most of these other ones are still at the trial court level, including the FDC one that was heard yesterday.
There was a May sixteenth appellate court.
Argument, right, So on May sixteenth, the NLRB and MSPB cases were argued before the DC Circuit panel on the merits. Right. We already discussed how the preliminary issue or sort of the emergency issue regarding the injunction to reinstate them went up, but those were just emergency issues here, and on May sixteenth concerned the full merits of the trial court's ruling
to reinstate the commissioners. And how did that go, you know, similar to how all these cases are going where you know, you do see this alignment where that panel had again two judges, Judge Walker and Judge Katsas, who were appointed by President Trump, and then Judge Pan who was appointed by President Biden. And you know, Judge Pan was very critical or skeptical of the Trump administration's position. So I expect her to rule in favor of the commissioners, but
you know, so likely be in the dissent. There are two other judges. Judge Walker has taken a very expansive view of executive authority. He wrote one of the opinions when this case reached the DC Circuit panel previously, and he took a very expansive view of executive authority. So he's very likely to rule for President Trump, and then the other judge, Katsis, I think will also rule for President Trump. He was sort of trying to figure out
just how far the Trump administration's argument could go. You know, he's trying to figure out sort of like what the outer bounds would be. But at the end of the day, I do expect that the Trump administration will win reversal at the panel level, after which, of course the Commissioners will then ask her and Bank review again. I expect they'll win there, and then we'll probably be onto the Supreme Court for ruling on the merits eventually.
Do you need a scorecard? It's you're here to figure out which cases are aware and which judges heard them. So now tell us about the case that reached the Supreme Court and Chief Justice Roberts handed down an order.
So in the NRB and MSCB cases, you know, we already talked about how it went to the on the emergency issue of whether the commissioners could be reinstated and
went to the DC Circuit panel and bank. The Trump administration lost at the end bank level, so they asked the Supreme Court to put a stay on the ruling that would have reinstated the commissioners, and the Supreme Court put an administrative stay on the injunction that would have reinstated the commissioners, you know, to give them more time to actually rule on the issue. But they haven't done anything subsequent to that, so, you know, I think it
seems like they're leaning. The Supreme Court is leaning towards letting the case play out at the lower court level, because in addition to requesting a stay of the injunction, the Trump administration also asked the Supreme Court to actually grant cert sort of you know, at a very early stage in the litigation, before it even went all the way through the DC Circuit on the merits. And the Supreme Court hasn't ruled on that request either.
The Trump administration seems to be doing that a lot, pushing the envelope for it.
Yeah, you know what we call the shadow dock here, right, you know, they're entitled to do it. Other parties do it.
Too, although no other president has gone to the Supreme Court on an emergency basis. This often in this short period of time, I think so far there are nineteen emergency petitions from the Trump administration at the Supreme Court, and that includes one file just today the administration asked the court to stop a judge's order that would force it to answer questions from a watchdog group and turnover
documents about Elon Musk's Department of Government efficiency. So they're not slowing down with the petitions.
Well, I mean, part of that is because a lot of these cases do go through the DC's circuit, which leans towards judges who have been appointed by Democrats, so as a result of Trump administration and loses more cases there, and then they go to the Supreme Court hoping for a win.
I mean, let's talk about how this affects perhaps the Federal Reserve Board, right and your own power. So, first of all, the Federal Reserve Act, is it the same kind of language as in these other.
Yes, it's similar. I mean, all these statutes sort of have variations of the same theme, which is some sort of four cause removal restriction. And sometimes it's defined, sometimes it's not defined what four causes. When it's not defined. It's generally assumed to mean some sort of neglect, inefficiency, or malfeasance. The Federal Reserve Act does have four cause removal restriction language in order to remove you know, Federal
Reserve Board governors. It doesn't have any such language to sort of demote the or any of the vice chairs, but to completely remove them from the board. It does have that language.
There have been, you know, arguments at the Supreme Court where during the oral argument some of the justices singled out the Feds being different. But what's your take on whether the cases that we've been talking about indicate that the court will rule that the president can fire the Federal Reserve chair.
Yeah. It's interesting because the issue does come up in all these cases that we've already discussed, and you know that the commissioners who were fired, and some of the judges who are skeptical to the Trump administration's view say well, you know, if you can fire these commissioners, there's nothing
to stop you from firing Federal Reserve Board governors. And then it's interesting because then the Trump administration comes back and says, well, you know, we haven't taken a position on the Federal Reserve Board that's not before this court. There may be arguments that Federal Reserve Board governors could raise that are different than the ones before these other cases. So it's sort of interesting to see how the Trump
administration tries to sidestep that argument. But at the end of the day, I think the commissioners are right and the judges that are skeptical to the Trump administration are right because the Fed, you know, it has rule making authority, it can bring enforcement actions. It does a lot of things on the regulatory side of its responsibilities that would fall under executive authority. Right. It also obviously has monetary policy responsibilities, and those are even the Trump administration has
carved those out from falling under the president's authority. But given its other powers, including rulemaking and enforcement action authority, I think, in order to be consistent with trumpet administration's arguments, which I do believe will prevail in these other cases, that the President would be able under the law to fire Federal Reserve Board governors. But I also say, you know, the markets are more likely to dissuade the president from doing that than the courts.
Are, and the Supreme Court justices. Is it just the to Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsich who said that they would overrule Humphrey's executor.
Yeah, they are the only two that has explicitly said that. And they did say that. I forget if it was in Sale a Law or in Collins. I think it was in Sale They said they would explicitly overrule Humphries. But you know the rest of the Conservative justices, they've interpreted Humphries to be a very narrow exception to the general rule that the president can fire anyone in the exec dipperience.
And are we still waiting to see if the Supreme Court rules on reinstatement of the NLRB and MSBT.
Yeah, technically those requests are still pending. But you know, given that the DC Circuit panel just last Friday on the sixteenth, heard those cases on the merits, it would be odd I think for the Supreme Court to take up the case now. I think they'll wait for the DC Circuit to rule.
Well, the Supreme Court has lots of other emergency applications to consider. Thanks so much, Elliott. That's Bloomberg Intelligence senior litigation analyst Elliott Stein. Geofence warrants are relatively New Google received its first in twenty sixteen, but the use of such warrants has proliferated, as have court cases challenging them. Unlike a warrant authorizing surveillance of a known suspect, geo
fencing is used to identify would be suspects. Google has been the primary recipient of these warrants due to its extensive location history database. Federal courts have split on whether these geofence warrants are constitutional, but now New Jersey State Court has ruled that police use of geofence warrants does not violate constitutional privacy protections and is not an impermissible
general warrant. Joining me is Alex Ebert Bloomberg Law correspondent, So Alex tell us what a geofence warrant is.
A geofence warrant is a broad warrant that allows police to find out who may have been in a certain location at a given time. So imagine you're the police and you're looking for people, let's say at the Capitol riot on January sixth, and you want to find out, hey, whose cell phones might have been present around the Capitol when things started going down. Or let's say there was another event where we have a ride after there's a
police shooting. Hypothetically police officers could find out who was in the vicinity of building when it got broken into. That's the sort of information that police officers can be looking for.
So what is the question when using a geofence warrant? Is it privacy concerns? What are the constitutional concerns?
That's right? So this all boils down to privacy, And there's two sort of big questions that courts are grappling with. One is this a general warrant that would violate the Fourth Amendment protections we have against the police invading our privacy? And two would this be considered the stuff that we don't really have an entitlement to protect because it's held
by third parties. This is an issue that courts have grappled with for decades and it gets only more complex as more of our data is being given to third parties.
Tell us what happened in this case? What you know the facts of the case.
Sure, So this case involves a Milltown robbery. Basically, what happens is someone came into a convenience store gas station late at night and the clerk who got assaulted hurt someone talking on the phone. That was really all the police had to go off of in this case. And so because they knew there was a phone conversation going on, they went to Google and said, hey, was there anyone in this particular area. Usually it's a couple of blocks that is making a phone call or accessing their phone
at this given time period. They went to Google and Google found only one identifiable person that was there, and from there the police officers were able to request from Google demand that they provide the identification of that Googled user and.
So explain what the court found here.
Sure, So the New Jersey Court of Appeals was extremely divided, as other courts have been in recent times on this issue. The majority found that this is okay. That there's a process through which the police here are requesting information from Google, and they're narrowing it down based on the location and the time period that they're seeking pings on people's cell phones.
And from there it's fine, it's articulable suspicion. We've got the probable cause necessary to get this information in a warrant. But the descent here is saying, no way, what we're asking for here is to hoover up all this information, and you're able to tap into whomever might be in this location at a given time, whether or not they might be related to this crime or not.
This New Jersey case is a case in state court, but the federal courts are split on this. The Fourth Circuit, sitting on Bank couldn't produce a majority opinion explaining why they allowed the geofence warrant, so it issued eight separate concurrences.
It is such a mess, Joon. So we have that court going that direction, and then we have the Fifth Circuit, what we would consider to be extremely conservative, going to complete other routes. So we have this circuit split where we have a court that says this isn't the search at all, this is information held by third parties. The defendants aren't entitled to protection over right. Then we've got the Fifth Circuit saying this isn't just a search, this
is an unconstitutional general warrant. You know the thing that you know we created the Fourth Amendment to stop. We don't want the British officers coming in and ransacking our houses just generally looking for stuff, and that's what you're trying to do here with these general warrants of disinformation at Google users and just pulling it back. We're talking about hundreds of millions of devices in the United States. You know, hundreds of millions of people have access to
just Google's accounts. And so if you're looking at the split here, it's the difference between can we get at that private information that's held by these service providers, by these apps, or is that just too much data? Do we have an updated sense of privacy that is being invaded here?
Do you have any idea how many of these GEO warrants are issued in a year.
I haven't been able to find information how mean it is. However, when I've spoken with attorneys off the record, they've told me that it's increasing again and again and again because it's becoming more valuable in for We also have other courts considering this issue right now. Just last month, the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals, which is their highest level of criminal courts, they allowed the geofense warrants, and the Minnesota Supreme Court is considering right now a case on
the constitutionality of geofense warrants. So this is bubbling up across the country.
Could this be appealed to the New Jersey Supreme Court.
Indeed, so because this is a divided decision in the Court of Appeals, New Jersey Supreme Court will automatically grant review if the loser wants it. That is a certainty here. This is going to be a huge case and you're going to see you know, amakis briefs from all over the country pour in on this thing because there's so few of these decisions that are either bubbling up or
at that highest court level. And in particular, New Jersey is extremely strong in Fourth Amendment terms, and it has interpreted both the national the federal Fourth amend and its own privacy protections broadly for criminal defendants.
Google is implementing changes to encryption. Explain what they're trying to do, that's right.
Yeah, So it's been over a year now since Google has announced that it's going to be implementing changes to encryption that would prevent somewhat you know, some of these broader geofense warrants we're talking about. Instead of Google storing this information, it will be stored on a local device, or it will be you know, encrypted in such a way that giving Google can't read it, and so it
can't turn over account information to police officers. But that's not necessarily going to stop, either for Google or for other apps. If you think about it, there's other warrants
that you know, could function well beyond this. Right, So, if you're taking an Uber somewhere, why can't the police say, hey, Uber, give me all of the rides that you know came into this block, right or this series of blocks within the you know, three hours the night April twenty fives, or Facebook or Apple you know, were there any location tags or people that bought things, you know, using Apple
Pay or whatever within certain radius around here. It's not just Google that you know, defendants might have to worry about. And beyond that, you could even think of ways where you can get at this sort of information without really looking at you know, pinging from someone's location through geolocation. What if you could go to Google and say, hey, give me anyone that's searched for, you know, the victim's house or areas around there in a certain time period.
So you can think of creative ways where the police could really use an expansive access to these geofence warrants to look for information, you know, even outside of what Google is trying to prohibit.
Has the Supreme Court taken up any case that's similar to these geo warrants?
Not exactly on point tune. So over the course of my lifetime, the Supreme Court has gone from a more favorable access to third party data to a less favorable access to third party data framework and stamp. And in twenty eighteen, we had a Carpenter case, which is about the pinging of cell phone towers, right and there the Supreme Court made sort of a great ruling for defendants that, hey, police have to get a warrant to get access to this.
You can't just hoover in this information. But there's nothing that's on this level that involves this kind of technology and this kind of.
Warrant, And how's the privacy bar taking this case?
Privacy rights attorneys are really up in arms about this because of the huge implications here, and you know, for the creative ways that it could be used. You know, oftentimes these sort of maneuvers aren't really discovered until you know, months or years after. You know, police are looking for this information, but at the same time police officers say, hey, we didn't have anything on this guy. You know that committed this robbery. You know, there's no CCTV. There's nothing
really that would have given us this lead. And so on one hand you have this extremely powerful tool for police officers, and then the other you have this really scary, sort of invasive ability to look into what we're doing on our phones.
I'm sure we're going to hear more about these warrants. Thanks so much, Alex. That's Bloomberg Law correspondent Alex Ebert coming up. A Democratic member of Congress charged with felony assault. This is Bloomberg. New Jersey Congresswoman la Monica McIver appeared in court today to face felony charges accusing her of assaulting US immigration officers as she tried to prevent Newark's mayor from being arrested outside a detention facility on May ninth.
Macgiver said the charges against her are purely political. They mischaracterize and distort her actions, and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight. It is rare for the Department of Justice to charge a sitting member of Congress criminally for things other than campaign finance violations or corruption. House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries said it crosses the line.
We're not going to be intimidated by their tactics to try to force principled opposition from not standing up to their extremism.
My guest is immigration law expert Leon Fresco, a partner at Holland and Knight. Leon. This arrest relates to that scrum outside the private detention facility, and both sides are pointing to video to illustrate their cases.
The federal government's position is interestingly enough that the original person that they had arrested, the Newark mayor Ros Barakai, it turns out in the end, was not amenable to addrespassing prosecution, so those charges were actually dropped, but that this representative McIver is liable for the impeding of an arrest which would have been an arrest that theoretically was
not prosecutable, which was the arrest of ros Baraka. So that actually adds a little bit of a complication to this case because if they're saying that she was impeding the arrest of someone that theoretically shouldn't have been arrested because this person is not actually being prosecuted, now hard to say what was being impeded there, but there's that argument, and then there's the second one about whether this representative
was actually pushing and shoving and grabbing Homeland Security Investigation agents. I've seen the video. Look, if you take this unwanted touching language broadly, you know, all of us commit battery and assault every day, you know, if you're in a sub way or if you're at a football game or something, who knows. So that's the problem with these statues of unwanted touching is the government has great discretion over who
it can prosecutor who it cannot. And what the Representative McIver is going to say is that at the end of the day, that this is a person trying to have congressional oversight. There's a statute that literally says this person is able to go into a facility without meaning to get prior clear in that access is being blockaded. And so this person is trying to do what they can to get access to the facility and is being impeded by the government, and so it will be up
for the courts to decide. I do think if this is a criminal case happening in New Jersey that if it doesn't get dismissed by a judge, it's very unlikely that a jury will vote to convict the representative in this set of facts. I don't see how it's possible you could get jurors to unanimously agree to convict in this scenario. I don't see basically any chance of that.
But nevertheless, if this prosecution continues, that's probably where we would end up as a try and I'm sure either a mistrial or even potentially an acquittal, because I don't think the jury's going to take too kindly to this kind of prosecution.
You have armed ICE agents and they're claiming that this woman jostled them, and she's screaming he just assaulted me. It just seems like the facts are, to put it kindly, the facts are not clear. So why make a federal case out of this?
I think the argument would be that they want the congress people in the future to call ICE and arrange these tours and have a more orderly process than just showing up with cameras saying you know, we're against what's going on in this facility, and then dramatically ordering one's way into the facility. So they're trying to deter that. But I don't think it's very likely that if this
case ends up going to trial. Look, it's possible to end up going to trial because, as I said, this assault and battery elements to this are very very broad, and any of us could be convicted for them at basically any time in terms of just an unwonted touching. So then the question is what do you do after that? And I think that's the question is are you actually doing something that's a criminal act that allows you to
actually go to jail. Just in the history of New Jersey and a lot of the trials they've had, it seems unlikely that there would be able to be a conviction in this case.
She likened the charges to the indictment of the Wisconsin judge who was accused of helping an undocumented immigrant elude federal agencies. Is this more about the Trump administration proving a point?
I don't know if it's about them proving a point. I'm just saying I think the desired effect is to get people to coordinate their visits with ICE. But you know, I leave it for your listeners to decide whether this is the method that's the most productive for that purpose.
Turned to another immigration issue, A Massachusetts judge has found that the Trump administration violated an order he issued last month that barred officials from deporting people to countries other than their own home country without first giving them enough time to object. Why is the administration even sending migrants to South Sudan?
Well, I think there was previously a dispute with South Sudan about work for the US government to take back people to be deported to South Sudan. And it looks like this dispute has been resolved in a way where South Sudan is now agreeing to take other people rather than South Sudanese people back for deportations. And so to the extent that the Trump administration has people that it can't afford to other nations, it appears that it's going to be trying to do that. And what did your
thing with regard to that? Is also that the Trump administration, unlike many other countries whose temporary protective status it has taken away, it actually renewed for six more months the temporary protective status for South Sudan. So it does seem like there's some coalescing of some arrangement there. But now, of course we have an injunction and a tumultuous federal court situation with regard to sending these individuals from other countries to South Sudan.
I have a practical question. If we're talking about eight to twelve migrants, rather than possibly flouting a court order, why not just keep them in detention. It's not a station number.
I mean, this is a very interesting question. And the pattern in practice previously was to make sure that if there was any litigation around a specific issue, that you would not have that deportation until all the litigation was done.
But I think that the Trump administration is feeling very frustrated with the amount of litigation, the amount of timing, and they're just trying to take any window that's conceivably possible that they can argue that a deportation was proper so that they could then execute that deportation and then go back to the courts and say, sorry, we don't know what to do now that that deportation has happened.
Why are they struggling with these cases that are distinct in different ways. If there are so many migrants that they say have to be deported, I.
Think the issue is they're trying to create solutions to a lot of different problems that have been long running in the immigration system. So there's always been this large group of people that just can't be deported because their countries won't accept them. And so they're trying to send
these messages even if they can't accomplish a deportation. They're trying to send the message to people who would otherwise not be fearful of remains here because they don't think they can be deported, to say, the last thing you want is for us to come get you and then send you to South Sudan or to El Salvador, or to Rwanda or someplace like that. And I think so a lot of this is to create an effect of
deterrent rather than just accomplish the twelve removal. So I think that's what's really going on here, Lee.
And as you know, the Supreme Court has said that the government has to give undocumented migrants due process and the ability to file habeas corpus petitions. And yesterday on Capitol Hill, Homeland Security Secretary Christy Nome was asked to explain what habeas corpus was by Democratic Senator Maggie Hassen of New Hampshire.
So Secretary Nome, what is habeas corpus? Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country to.
Spend their right.
Let me stop man, spend the hebeas corpus. Excuse me, that's that's incorrect. President, excuse me. Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.
So how will the Department be able to follow the Supreme Court's orders if its top official thinks habeas corpus is the right of the president rather than the right of those imprisoned or detained.
I mean, it is a complicated situation. But for your listeners, because we've certainly talked about habeas corpus in the past, and so I do think it's useful for everybody to
be clear that corpus means body in Latin. And so the point is, whenever you feel that your body is being unnecessarily restrained or detained and formed by the government, the traditional remedy for that is to file a habeas corpus, saying take custody over this body and tell the government to not unlawfully either detain or restrain it in some manner. And that's what an abeas corpus is. So when you
hear that term, that's what it is. It's the ability of any person in the United States who feels that the government is unjustly doing something with detainment or restrainment of their body to be able to go to a court and say, you the government are acting unlawfully in
doing this. And so people are doing that now for the purposes of trying to avoid removal under these various new ways that the government is trying to accomplish removal, such as the Alien Enemies Act or the Foreign Policy Act, where the government is saying that people are here in violation of US foreign policy interests. And so if the Supreme Court has said, look, we know that there's normal immigration laws, but you can't use that for these. You got to go use a abeas corpus in order to
challenge this. That's what the Supreme Court has said. And so now people are doing that, and so we're this debate is is will the Trump administration actually do what's called suspension of habeas corpus, which is the only way it can do that under the laws that claims that the United States is under an invasion, which is the same reason it's citing the Alien Enemies Act. And so those cases are currently not going well for the government, and so will it be able to suspend habeas corpus
at this time? And so that's what the debate is about.
And the federal judge in Massachusetts has said that the Trump administration unquestionably violated the court order with this possible deportation flight to South Sudan. So we'll see where that goes.
That's where it gets complicated because the courts have so far not said you have to bring someone back. Now, it's a little bit different when someone's not in detention
like they are in El Salvador. So if the people sent to South Sudan are not going to be placed in a detention facility, well, and there's no theoretical problem for the United States to quote unquote facilitate their entrance back, because now it's just a matter of being given a document that allows you to re enter the United States and perhaps a playing ride, though that would be potentially
a subject of litigation. But the Al Savador cases troubled because of the fact that they're in detention, so that you would need al Savador to actually agree to levels individuals out of detention. But in South today, and it's not clear that these individuals will be in detention there, and so in past cases people have been allowed to re enter. The government has actually flown the people back into the country, and we'll see if that's what happens here.
I'm sure everyone will understand habeas corpus by the time we're through with all these cases. Thanks so much, Leon. That's Leon Fresco, a partner at Holland and Knight. And that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law podcasts. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot Bloomberg dot com, slash podcast Slash Law, and remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every
weeknight at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg