Politics
Defying courts in deportation case, Trump risks a tipping point, experts say
WASHINGTON — It was just the latest example of President Trump, still in the infancy of his second term, appearing to plow through direct orders from a U.S. court. But it was the sharpest moment yet of a federal judge losing patience.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had asked what the administration had done, if anything, to follow a ruling from the highest court in the land, and reached a stark conclusion.
“To date, nothing has been done,” Xinis told the Justice Department lawyer before her Tuesday. “Nothing.”
The Supreme Court had ordered the administration last week to “facilitate” the return of a Maryland resident named Armando Abrego Garcia, whom it had deported to a notorious El Salvador prison despite an earlier court order barring such a move.
The administration had defied that order and made no secret of it. On cable TV, through social media and from the Oval Office, the president and his allies were clear they had no intention to work toward Abrego Garcia’s return.
Still, Xinis’ concluding as much in court added fresh weight to a profound question swirling with increasing intensity in recent days among government officials and watchdogs, constitutional scholars, legal experts and worried members of the public: If the president refuses to abide by court rulings, then is the United States in a constitutional crisis?
If Trump won’t listen to the Supreme Court, is the entire U.S. system of governance — the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, due process under the law — at risk of faltering?
For some, the answer is an affirmative yes — the actions of the administration in the Abrego Garcia case a clear tipping point.
“There is no guarantee that President Trump will abide by his legal and constitutional obligations, and he has already shown a willingness to violate those obligations many times over,” said Jamal Greene, a constitutional law professor at Columbia University.
Others said that the risk is certainly there, but that legal nuance remains in the maneuverings of the Trump administration — enough to imagine a less fraught future in which the administration falls back in line as the courts make their directives in the Abrego Garcia case less ambiguous and harder to skirt using dubious but still barely defensible legal arguments.
Robert Weisberg, a professor at Stanford Law School, said the judiciary also still has tools at its disposal to enforce its rulings should Trump and his team continue defying court orders, and especially the Supreme Court.
For example, if a court issues an injunction “saying, ‘You can’t do this,’ ” and the administration does it anyway, the court can hold the administration in contempt. And, the U.S. Marshals Service, the law enforcement arm of the judicial branch, can be called upon to enforce the court’s orders, Weisberg said.
“So there are ways,” he said. “The Supreme Court has tools.”
A deportation with consequences for Trump
Either way, the case raises stark questions for a country already exhausted by a steady stream of unprecedented moves by the Trump administration and a mountain of lawsuits challenging them — on immigration enforcement, federal funding streams to the states, LGBTQ+ rights and school funding, among many issues.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office has already sued the Trump administration more than a dozen times and expressed support for litigants suing the administration in at least half a dozen other cases. Other Democratic-led states have joined California in its cases.
Time and time again, courts have blasted the administration for violating the law — sometimes in flagrant ways. And in multiple instances, the administration has defied court instructions to reverse course, judges and litigants against the administration have said.
California has alleged that the administration has failed to unfreeze funding, including under the Federal Emergency Management Agency, despite court orders for it to do so. Associated Press journalists continued to be barred from White House functions after a judge ordered they be allowed back in. The Trump administration balked at another court order that it return immigrants who had been loaded onto a plane for deportation, arguing that the plane was already in the air and out of the judge’s jurisdiction.
Still, the Abrego Garcia case and an Oval Office meeting partially about it between Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Monday have ratcheted up fears of a recalcitrant Trump unafraid of defying the courts when they attempt to check him or his policies.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen and sheet metal worker living in Maryland, had been arrested years ago while looking for work outside of a Home Depot in Maryland. A judge had determined in 2019 that he should not be deported to El Salvador because he would be in danger there from a local gang, allowing him to remain in the country.
However, Abrego Garcia was detained last month on claims by the administration that he is a member of the MS-13 gang, and then deported along with other detainees to a notorious prison in El Salvador. His family, denying the gang allegations, sued in response, alleging that his rights had been violated and that the administration had broken the law and the previous judge’s decision allowing him to remain in the country.
The case moved swiftly up through the courts.
‘Facilitate’ vs. ‘effectuate’?
When it was first before Xinis, she found that the evidence of Abrego Garcia’s alleged gang affiliation was slim — amounting to a tip from an informant that he’d worn Chicago Bulls apparel associated with the gang — and that the government had wrongfully removed him from the country. Xinis then ordered the Trump administration to both “facilitate” and “effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States.
The Trump administration appealed that ruling, resulting in a terse unsigned decision by the Supreme Court on Thursday that required the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, but not “effectuate” it.
The high court said the “intended scope of the term ‘effectuate’” was unclear and may exceed the district court’s authority in the matter, and called on Xinis to clarify her directive “with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers claimed the ruling as a victory and a clear directive to that administration that it have him returned to the U.S. The Trump administration, however, claimed a victory as well.
“As the Supreme Court correctly recognized, it is the exclusive prerogative of the president to conduct foreign affairs,” a Department of Justice spokesperson said. “By directly noting the deference owed to the executive branch, this ruling once again illustrates that activist judges do not have the jurisdiction to seize control of the president’s authority to conduct foreign policy.”
Xinis followed the Supreme Court’s ruling by issuing another of her own, calling again on the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. That set up the Oval Office meeting Monday, where Trump and Bukele insisted they were not going to bring Abrego Garcia home.
In what some legal observers saw as an absurd twist of logic, Trump administration officials said they would supply the plane to return Abrego Garcia if only El Salvador would allow it, while Bukele said El Salvador could not possibly return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. because doing so would amount to smuggling a terrorist into an allied territory.
“Of course, I’m not going to do it,” he said. “The question is preposterous.”
In the same meeting, Trump said “the homegrowns are next” — a clear insinuation that he wants to send American citizens to Salvadoran prisons next, in clear violation of American law.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador, speaks at an April 4 news conference.
(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)
During Tuesday’s hearing before Xinis, the Trump administration made it clear that it took an extremely narrow view of what facilitating Abrego Garcia’s return requires.
“If Abrego Garcia presents himself at a port of entry, we will facilitate his entry to the United States,” said Drew Ensign, an attorney for the Justice Department. Ensign also submitted a transcript of the Oval Office meeting, suggesting the case had clearly been “raised at the highest level.”
Xinis was unmoved, demanding documentation of the administration’s actions in recent days. Legal experts said the order could set the stage for Xinis to find the Trump administration in contempt of court. And that could raise new questions about the power of the court to hold the administration to account — and whether it has any teeth in the event the administration pushes back.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law, said it’s questionable whether the Justice Department or the U.S. marshals would help to enforce any criminal or civil contempt orders against the administration or any of its actors.
“The question is, do we have the guardrails for our Constitution to survive?” Chemerinsky said. “‘We don’t know’ is the only answer anyone can give. You can play it out, and it’s very frightening.”
If Trump was given a very clear, unambiguous order from the courts and openly declared that the administration would not comply, the country would be in an extremely dangerous position, Chemerinsky said.
And if he won out in that scenario — wasn’t stopped by Congress or the courts or anyone else — “then the president can do anything,” Chemerinsky added. He could violate other constitutional laws and court orders and “literally lock up anybody, any dissident,” without fear of repercussions.
“Of course then the reality is this is not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship,” Chemerinsky said.
‘Crisis is here’
Democrats in Congress have been sounding similar alarms, with some arguing that Trump has already crossed the line into authoritarian behavior — and thrust the country into a constitutional crisis.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote in a post to X late Monday: “The constitutional crisis is here.”
The post also included a nearly six-minute video in which Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, attempted to explain the complicated Abrego Garcia case, the administration’s actions in it, and why they put the country in crisis.
“It’s a constitutional crisis because the administration is under a court order to return this wrongfully deported man to the United States. To facilitate his return,” Schiff said. “And far from taking any step to facilitate his return, in that meeting in the White House, Donald Trump essentially told the Supreme Court to pound sand.
“Nowhere in that entire meeting does the president of the United States ask the president of El Salvador to return the man wrongly sent to a maximum security prison in his country,” Schiff said. “It just never happens.”
Schiff said the president, through his actions, had “taken a very determined step toward dictatorship.”
Chemerinsky agreed that the days of wondering whether the U.S. is in a constitutional crisis were over.
He said the U.S. is “clearly in a constitutional crisis” both because of the “quantity of unconstitutional things that have been done” by the Trump administration that show Trump “has no respect for constitutional law,” and because of the extreme actions and recalcitrance of the administration in the Abrego Garcia case in particular.
“It could get worse, but that doesn’t minimize that we’re in one now,” he said.
Chemerinsky said it was clearly illegal under U.S. law for the administration to defy a court order and send a person to a notorious El Salvador prison without due process. And the administration’s claim now that it cannot bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. because he is under the control of a foreign government simply “has to be wrong” in a land of laws, he said.
“It’s nothing less than a claim of the power to put any human being in a foreign prison,” he said. “That’s the authority to create a gulag.”
new video loaded: Bill Clinton Says He ‘Did Nothing Wrong’ in House Epstein Inquiry
transcript
transcript
Bill Clinton Says He ‘Did Nothing Wrong’ in House Epstein Inquiry
Former President Bill Clinton told members of the House Oversight Committee in a closed-door deposition that he “saw nothing” and had done nothing wrong when he associated with Jeffrey Epstein decades ago.
-
“Cause we don’t know when the video will be out. I don’t know when the transcript will be out. We’ve asked that they be out as quickly as possible.” “I don’t like seeing him deposed, but they certainly went after me a lot more than that.” “Republicans have now set a new precedent, which is to bring in presidents and former presidents to testify. So we’re once again going to make that call that we did yesterday. We are now asking and demanding that President Trump officially come in and testify in front of the Oversight Committee.” “Ranking Member Garcia asked President Clinton, quote, ‘Should President Trump be called to answer questions from this committee?’ And President Clinton said, that’s for you to decide. And the president went on to say that the President Trump has never said anything to me to make me think he was involved. “The way Chairman Comer described it, I don’t think is a complete, accurate description of what actually was said. So let’s release the full transcript.”
By Jackeline Luna
February 27, 2026
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) accused Everett, Washington, Mayor Cassie Franklin of escalating tensions with federal authorities after she issued a directive limiting immigration enforcement in the city.
Franklin issued a mayoral directive this week establishing citywide protocols for staff, including law enforcement, that restrict federal immigration agents from entering non-public areas of city buildings without a judicial warrant.
“We’ve heard directly from residents who are afraid to leave their houses because of the concerning immigration activity happening locally and across our country. It’s heartbreaking to see the impacts on Everett families and businesses,” Franklin said in a statement.
“With this directive, we are setting clear protocols, protecting access to services and reinforcing our commitment to serving the entire community.”
ICE blasted the directive Friday, writing on X it “escalates tension and directs city law enforcement to intervene with ICE operations at their own discretion,” thereby “putting everyone at greater risk.”
Mayor Cassie Franklin said her new citywide immigration enforcement protocols are intended to protect residents and ensure access to services, while ICE accused her of escalating tensions with federal authorities. (Google Maps)
ICE said Franklin was directing city workers to “impede ICE operations and expose the location of ICE officers and agents.”
“Working AGAINST ICE forces federal teams into the community searching for criminal illegal aliens released from local jails — INCREASING THE FEDERAL PRESENCE,” the agency said. “Working with ICE reduces the federal presence.”
“If Mayor Franklin wanted to protect the people she claims to serve, she’d empower the city police with an ICE 287g partnership — instead she serves criminal illegal aliens,” ICE added.
DHS, WHITE HOUSE MOCK CHICAGO’S LAWSUIT OVER ICE: ‘MIRACULOUSLY REDISCOVERED THE 10TH AMENDMENT’
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement blasted Everett’s mayor after she issued a directive restricting federal agents from accessing non-public areas of city facilities without a warrant. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
During a city council meeting where she announced the policy, Franklin said “federal immigration enforcement is causing real fear for Everett residents.”
“It’s been heartbreaking to see the racial profiling that’s having an impact on Everett families and businesses,” she said. “We know there are kids staying home from school, people not going to work or people not going about their day, dining out or shopping for essentials.”
The mayor’s directive covers four main areas, including restricting federal immigration agents from accessing non-public areas of city buildings without a warrant, requiring immediate reporting of enforcement activity on city property and mandating clear signage to enforce access limits.
BLOCKING ICE COOPERATION FUELED MINNESOTA UNREST, OFFICIALS WARN AS VIRGINIA REVERSES COURSE
Everett, Wash., Mayor Cassie Franklin said her new directive is aimed at protecting residents amid heightened immigration enforcement activity. (iStock)
It also calls for an internal policy review and staff training, including the creation of an Interdepartmental Response Team and updated immigration enforcement protocols to ensure compliance with state law.
Franklin directed city staff to expand partnerships with community leaders, advocacy groups and regional governments to coordinate responses to immigration enforcement, while promoting immigrant-owned businesses and providing workplace protections and “know your rights” resources.
The mayor also reaffirmed a commitment to “constitutional policing and best practices,” stating that the police department will comply with state law barring participation in civil immigration enforcement. The directive outlines protocols for documenting interactions with federal officials, reviewing records requests and strengthening privacy safeguards and technology audits.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Everett, Wash., Mayor Cassie Franklin issued a directive limiting federal immigration enforcement in city facilities. (iStock)
“We want everyone in the city of Everett to feel safe calling 911 when they need help and to know that Everett Police will not ask about your immigration status,” Franklin said during the council meeting. ”I also expect our officers to intervene if it’s safe to do so to protect our residents when they witness federal officers using unnecessary force.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to Mayor Franklin’s office and ICE for comment.
Related Article
The morning after Netflix clinched its deal to buy Warner Bros., Paramount Skydance Chairman David Ellison assembled a war room of trusted advisors, including his billionaire father, Larry Ellison.
Furious at Warner Bros. Discovery Chief David Zaslav for ending the auction, the Ellisons and their team began plotting their comeback on that crisp December day.
To rattle Warner Bros. Discovery and its investors, they launched a three-front campaign: a lawsuit, a hostile takeover bid and direct lobbying of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.
“There was a master battle plan — and it was extremely disciplined,” said one auction insider who was not authorized to comment publicly.
Netflix stunned the industry late Thursday by pulling out of the bidding, clearing the way for Paramount to claim the company that owns HBO, HBO Max, CNN, TBS, Food Network and the Warner Bros. film and television studios in Burbank. The deal was valued at more than $111 billion.
The streaming giant’s reversal came just hours after co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos met with Atty Gen. Pam Bondi and a deputy at the White House. It was a cordial session, but the Trump officials told Sarandos that his deal was facing significant hurdles in Washington, according to a person close to the administration who was not authorized to comment publicly.
Even before that meeting, the tide had turned for Paramount in a swell of power, politics and brinkmanship.
“Netflix played their cards well; however, Paramount played their cards perfectly,” said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Integrated Media Co. “They did exactly what they had to do and when they had to do it — which was at the very last moment.”
Key to victory was Larry Ellison, his $200-billion fortune and his connections to President Trump and congressional Republicans.
Paramount also hired Trump’s former antitrust chief, attorney Makan Delrahim, to quarterback the firm’s legal and regulatory action.
Republicans during a Senate hearing this month piled onto Sarandos with complaints about potential monopolistic practices and “woke” programming.
David Ellison skipped that hearing. This week, however, he attended Trump’s State of the Union address in the Capitol chambers, a guest of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). The two men posed, grinning and giving a thumbs-up, for a photo that was posted to Graham’s X account.
David Ellison, the chairman and chief executive of Paramount Skydance Corp., walks through Statuary Hall to the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 24, 2026.
(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
On Friday, Netflix said it had received a $2.8-billion payment — a termination fee Paramount agreed to pay to send Netflix on its way.
Long before David Ellison and his family acquired Paramount and CBS last summer, the 43-year-old tech scion and aircraft pilot already had his sights set on Warner Bros. Discovery.
Paramount’s assets, including MTV, Nickelodeon and the Melrose Avenue movie studio, have been fading. Ellison recognized he needed the more robust company — Warner Bros. Discovery — to achieve his ambitions.
“From the very beginning, our pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery has been guided by a clear purpose: to honor the legacy of two iconic companies while accelerating our vision of building a next-generation media and entertainment company,” David Ellison said in a Friday statement. “We couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead.”
Warner’s chief, Zaslav, who had initially opposed the Paramount bid, added: “We look forward to working with Paramount to complete this historic transaction.”
Netflix, in a separate statement, said it was unwilling to go beyond its $82.7-billion proposal that Warner board members accepted Dec. 4.
“We believe we would have been strong stewards of Warner Bros.’ iconic brands, and that our deal would have strengthened the entertainment industry and preserved and created more production jobs,” Sarandos and co-Chief Executive Greg Peters said in a statement.
“But this transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price,” the Netflix chiefs said.
Netflix may have miscalculated the Ellison family’s determination when it agreed Feb. 16 to allow Paramount back into the bidding.
The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company already had prevailed in the auction, and had an agreement in hand. Its next step was a shareholder vote.
“They didn’t need to let Paramount back in, but there was a lot of pressure on them to make sure the process wouldn’t be challenged,” Miller said.
In addition, Netflix’s stock had also been pummeled — the company had lost a quarter of its value — since investors learned the company was making a Warner run.
Upon news that Netflix had withdrawn, its shares soared Friday nearly 14% to $96.24.
Netflix Chief Executive Ted Sarandos arrives at the White House on Feb. 26, 2026.
(Andrew Leyden / Getty Images)
Invited back into the auction room, Paramount unveiled a much stronger proposal than the one it submitted in December.
The elder Ellison had pledged to personally guarantee the deal, including $45.7 billion in equity required to close the transaction. And if bankers became worried that Paramount was too leveraged, the tech mogul agreed to put in more money in order to secure the bank financing.
That promise assuaged Warner Bros. Discovery board members who had fretted for weeks that they weren’t sure Ellison would sign on the dotted line, according to two people close to the auction who were not authorized to comment.
Paramount’s pressure campaign had been relentless, first winning over theater owners, who expressed alarm over Netflix’s business model that encourages consumers to watch movies in their homes.
During the last two weeks, Sarandos got dragged into two ugly controversies.
First, famed filmmaker James Cameron endorsed Paramount, saying a Netflix takeover would lead to massive job losses in the entertainment industry, which is already reeling from a production slowdown in Southern California that has disrupted the lives of thousands of film industry workers.
Then, a week ago, Trump took aim at Netflix board member Susan Rice, a former high-level Obama and Biden administration official. In a social media post, Trump called Rice a “no talent … political hack,” and said that Netflix must fire her or “pay the consequences.”
The threat underscored the dicey environment for Netflix.
Additionally, Paramount had sowed doubts about Netflix among lawmakers, regulators, Warner investors and ultimately the Warner board.
Paramount assured Warner board members that it had a clear path to win regulatory approval so the deal would quickly be finalized. In a show of confidence, Delrahim filed to win the Justice Department’s blessing in December — even though Paramount didn’t have a deal.
This month, a deadline for the Justice Department to raise issues with Paramount’s proposed Warner takeover passed without comment from the Trump regulators.
“Analysts believe the deal is likely to close,” TD Cowen analysts said in a Friday report. “While Paramount-WBD does present material antitrust risks (higher pay TV prices, lower pay for TV/movie workers), analysts also see a key pro-competitive effect: improved competition in streaming, with Paramount+ and HBO Max representing a materially stronger counterweight to #1 Netflix.”
Throughout the battle, David Ellison relied on support from his father, attorney Delrahim, and three key board members: Oracle Executive Vice Chair Safra A. Catz; RedBird Capital Partners founder Gerry Cardinale; and Justin Hamill, managing director of tech investment firm Silver Lake.
In the final days, David Ellison led an effort to flip Warner board members who had firmly supported Netflix. With Paramount’s improved offer, several began leaning toward the Paramount deal.
On Tuesday, Warner announced that Paramount’s deal was promising.
On Thursday, Warner’s board determined Paramount’s deal had topped Netflix. That’s when Netflix surrendered.
“Paramount had a fulsome, 360-degree approach,” Miller said. “They approached it financially. … They understood the regulatory environment here and abroad in the EU. And they had a game plan for every aspect.”
On Friday, Paramount shares rose 21% to $13.51.
It was a reversal of fortunes for David Ellison, who appeared on CNBC just three days after that war room meeting in December.
“We put the company in play,” David Ellison told the CNBC anchor that day. “We’re really here to finish what we started.”
Times staff writer Ana Cabellos and Business Editor Richard Verrier contributed to this report.
Delaware history in News Journal March 1-7: Fire rescue, power rate jump
Golf roundup: Austin Smotherman plays ‘boring, simple’ to expand lead in Florida
Ga. lawmakers propose changes to state’s early voting process
No. 3 Rainbow Warriors continue winning ways against No. 6 BYU | Honolulu Star-Advertiser
Town Hall to address future of Medicaid expansion in Idaho – Local News 8
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
ICE blasts Washington mayor over directive restricting immigration enforcement
Did the EU bypass Hungary’s veto on Ukraine’s €90 billion loan?
How the federal government is painting immigrants as criminals on social media
Where Iran’s ballistic missiles can reach — and how close they are to the US
Has India’s influence in Afghanistan grown under the Taliban?
-
World2 days agoExclusive: DeepSeek withholds latest AI model from US chipmakers including Nvidia, sources say
-
Massachusetts3 days agoMother and daughter injured in Taunton house explosion
-
Montana1 week ago2026 MHSA Montana Wrestling State Championship Brackets And Results – FloWrestling
-
Louisiana5 days agoWildfire near Gum Swamp Road in Livingston Parish now under control; more than 200 acres burned
-
Denver, CO2 days ago10 acres charred, 5 injured in Thornton grass fire, evacuation orders lifted
-
Technology7 days agoYouTube TV billing scam emails are hitting inboxes
-
Technology7 days agoStellantis is in a crisis of its own making
-
Politics7 days agoOpenAI didn’t contact police despite employees flagging mass shooter’s concerning chatbot interactions: REPORT