U.S. judges increasingly fight against Trump’s inhumanity, but the higher courts are still on his side
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Federal Judge William G. Young of Boston left no room for doubt about what he thought of President Trump’s approach to governing.
In September, the Reagan appointee found that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had “intentionally” breached the 1st Amendment, with Trump’s support, by ordering the deportation of legal residents only because they had advocated publicly on behalf of Palestinians.
Young’s ruling dripped with disdain for Trump: “The Constitution, our civil laws, regulations, mores, customs, practices, courtesies — all of it; the President simply ignores it all when he takes it into his head to act.”
‘Our country has never seen anything like this Trump presidency. And so we are seeing judicial opinions of a sort that we have not seen before either.’
— Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley’s law school
He concluded: “I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected. Is he correct?” (Emphasis his.)
It might have seemed an unusual upbraiding of a president by a sitting judge. But Young’s frustration was far from unusual. Firm rejections of Trump administration policies have proliferated in court rulings to an extraordinary extent, with judges boldly expressing indignation about the evidence of federal overreach presented in their courtrooms.
The judges cite the government for its tendency to swear at reality in its defenses and the fundamental lawlessness of the behavior they are trying to block. Some have endowed their orders with moral condemnation. And some have explored the broader ramifications of Trump’s crackdown on immigrants — for their communities, society and the economy.
“Our country has never seen anything like this Trump presidency,” Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional scholar and dean of UC Berkeley’s law school, told me by email. “And so we are seeing judicial opinions of a sort that we have not seen before either.”
The administration’s cavalier approach to the law prompted at least one judge to school its lawyers in proper procedure.
“Don’t hide the ball,” wrote Judge Roy Dalton of Orlando, Fla., after finding that federal prosecutors came to him with “plainly ... incoherent” legal claims and a “baseless argument” to fight a habeas corpus petition involving a high school student brought to the U.S. by his Venezuelan parents and detained by immigration agents. “Don’t ignore the overwhelming weight of persuasive authority as if it won’t be found. And don’t send a sacrificial lamb to stand before this Court with a fistful of cases that don’t apply and no cogent argument for why they should.”
H-1B visas have long been used to undercut U.S. employment, but Trump’s proposed $100,000 fees won’t fix the problem.
Perhaps the loudest condemnation of administration behavior has come from Judge Fred Biery of San Antonio, who on Jan. 31 ordered the release of Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old child who was detained by immigration agents in Minnesota and jailed in Texas along with his father, an asylum seeker, provoking a nationwide uproar.
Liam’s case, observed Biery, a Clinton appointee, stemmed from “the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”
Judges also have taken offense at the administration’s repeated defiance of their orders.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit of the Department of Homeland Security “has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence,” Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the U.S. District Court of Minnesota complained in a recent ruling. Schiltz appended a four-page list of 96 court orders that ICE had defied.
The steadfast pushback against the administration might appear on the surface to be an encouraging trend, given the complaisance of the Republican majorities in Congress and weak-kneed capitulation to Trump by leaders of institutions such as universities and major corporations.
But most of the resistance seems to be taking place at the federal trial level. The administration has found appeals courts and the Supreme Court to be much friendlier venues.
Of 24 cases on the Supreme Court docket challenging Trump actions counted by Chemerinsky, “Trump has prevailed thus far in 22.” In almost all of them, Democratic appointees Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson have dissented against the Republican-appointed majority of six.
That’s not to say that Trump has invariably lost at the trial level. “I think we are deeply divided as a country in how we perceive Trump’s actions and judges are no different,” Chemerinsky says.
The influence that conservative appellate courts can exercise over trial judges is evident from two cases concerning the administration’s surge of immigration agents in Minnesota — both initially decided by Judge Katherine M. Menendez of Minneapolis, a Biden appointee.
In a Jan. 16 injunction, Menendez forbade Homeland Security agents from using pepper spray, tear gas or other such tools, including drawing or pointing their weapons, against anyone “engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity,” such as simply observing the agents, and from arresting or detaining the protesters.
Homes are invaded by masked and anonymous police, malfunctioning technology arrayed against citizens, information used as a weapon — 40 years ago, the movie “Brazil” painted a picture of America in 2025.
Menendez incorporated nearly 80 pages of allegations of the agents’ abusive behavior, backed up with videos and sworn declarations, in her ruling.
Two weeks later, however, Menendez backed away from her uncompromising condemnation of government activities, denying a request from the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul that she declare the entire surge unconstitutional. The plaintiffs argued that the surge was not genuinely aimed at curbing immigration violations, but was designed instead to coerce the cities and the state into participating in federal immigration enforcement, a violation of the 10th Amendment.
Menendez explained that she needed more time to find the line between legitimate government activity and the unconstitutional “commandeering” of states by the federal government.
What had happened in the meantime? The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a decidedly conservative court, had thrown out Menendez’s “retaliation” injunction as both “too broad” and “too vague.”
Some legal observers have conjectured the 8th Circuit’s reversal of her injunction prompted her to stay her hand, over a concern that the appeals court would overrule her again. Others think she was simply seeking more time to find a bright line between legitimate government activity and the unconstitutional “commandeering” of state resources for federal purposes.
Her ruling, argues Ilya Somin of George Mason University’s law school, is partially the result of Menendez’s “uncertainty about line-drawing issues.” Also, he notes in agreement with Menendez, “this case is in some ways unprecedented.”
That said, Somin believes that the state and cities are correct that the Minnesota surge violates the 10th Amendment. “Menendez should so rule when she decides the case on the merits, and appellate courts should uphold any such decision,” he wrote recently.
Some judges have stated forthrightly where they believe the problem with administration jurisprudence originates: at the top.
In a ruling Monday blocking Noem from terminating temporary protected status for Haitians, a move that would have instantly turned more than 350,000 legal residents into unauthorized immigrants, Judge Ana C. Reyes of Washington, D.C., drew heavily upon Trump’s comments about Haitians in finding that Noem’s action was fundamentally racist:
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“President Trump has made — freely, at times even boastfully — several derogatory statements about Haitians and other nonwhite foreigners ... declaring that ‘illegal immigrants’ — a category he wrongly assigns to Haitian TPS holders — are ‘poisoning the blood’ of America.”
She added, “To its credit, the Government does not defend President Trump’s derogatory statements. No one rationally could.” (Emphasis mine.)
Reyes didn’t restrict her judgment to Trump’s language. She also addressed the potential economic consequences of his effort to deport the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio.
Haitians protected from deportation under the law, Reyes wrote, “substantially benefit the U.S. economy, contributing approximately $3.4 billion to it annually.” More than 100,000 Haitians work in healthcare, she wrote, adding that Haitians in the U.S. “play indispensable roles in hospitality, food service, education, and manufacturing — industries that already face labor shortages and would be further destabilized by the loss of this workforce.”
Indications are that federal judges will continue to press the administration on its overreach and the unalloyed inhumanity of its immigration policies and other initiatives — ruling, as Biery put it, “with a finger in the constitutional dike.”
The Texas judge’s gloss on Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign may be the most pertinent of all. “Observing human behavior,” he wrote, “confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.”
Biery closed his order with a reproduction of the heartbreaking and now-viral photograph of 5-year-old Liam, wearing his blue bunny-eared beanie, his Spider-Man backpack clutched by an immigration agent. He captioned it with a reference to the Gospel of John, 11:35.
That’s the shortest verse in the King James Version, consisting of only two words: “Jesus wept.”
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Ideas expressed in the piece
Federal trial judges have begun expressing unprecedented criticism of Trump administration policies, with judges citing evidence of constitutional violations and federal overreach in immigration enforcement and free speech protections. Federal judges have found that the administration violated the First Amendment by targeting noncitizen students and faculty for deportation based on pro-Palestinian advocacy, with one judge ruling that non-citizens lawfully present in the United States have the same free speech rights as citizens[3].
Multiple judges have documented a pattern of the administration disregarding constitutional protections and court orders, with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit accused of violating more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence, according to a federal judge who compiled a list of 96 defied orders. Judges have also expressed concern about the humanitarian impact of immigration policies, including the detention of a five-year-old child and the potential economic consequences of deporting protected immigrant communities.
However, despite these trial-level victories, the administration has prevailed in most cases that have reached higher courts, with Trump winning 22 out of 24 cases on the Supreme Court docket challenging his actions, according to a constitutional scholar’s count. Conservative appeals courts have reversed some trial judges’ injunctions against the administration, suggesting a significant divide in judicial response based on court level.
Different views on the topic
The Trump administration has characterized judicial rulings against its policies as threats to national security and public safety, with White House officials describing court decisions blocking immigration enforcement measures as “outrageous” and as jeopardizing “the safety and security of our nation”[1]. The administration has argued that restrictions on immigration enforcement actions are overly broad and interfere with legitimate executive authority to protect the country[1].
Administration officials have contested judicial characterizations of immigration enforcement, with Department of Homeland Security representatives arguing that judges have mischaracterized ICE law enforcement actions by comparing them to extremist groups[1]. The administration has maintained that the president is a strong advocate for the First Amendment while asserting that certain conduct, such as riots and harassment, do not constitute protected speech[1].
Conservative appeals courts have signaled skepticism of some trial judges’ rulings, with appellate courts throwing out injunctions as overly broad and vague, suggesting judicial restraint regarding the scope of limitations on executive immigration authority. The administration has signaled its intent to continue appealing unfavorable trial court decisions, with legal experts noting that key provisions of administration executive orders had faced receptive audiences in higher courts[2].
