Tag: Policy: Immigration

Last fortnight’s news – for the two weeks ending 2025 07 20

Here’s a couple of weeks’ worth of interesting items from the news here in North Texas. No musical accompaniment this time, though we did spend a lot of time today listening to the late, lamented Asylum Street Spankers.

From Dallas:

From Fort Worth:

From Dallas County:

From Tarrant County:

From the suburban cities and towns:

From the suburban counties:

From throughout the North Texas region:

Local editorials and op-eds:

And miscellaneous news (including museums and zoos):

87 days to dismantle democracy

I’ve been wanting to write about the Mahmoud Khalil matter because it touches on both immigration law and the Trump push to force the judiciary to fall into line under him. Another case with the same features broke over the weekend; the crisis Trump wanted to provoke is here. The administration removed a group of Venezuelans (I’ve seen numbers between 170 and 270) to a private jail in El Salvador in apparent defiance of a judge’s order to turn the planes they were on around and bring them back.

On the immigration side, the administration is relying on the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, best known in the last century as the basis for Japanese internment. The Venezuelans are alleged to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which the administration says is invading the United States. None of the Venezuelans have been convicted of any crime, and while I’m describing them as Venezuelans, nobody knows who they are. Some of them might be American citizens.

On the constitutional crisis side, the administration just ignored an order from a federal judge. Usually when a party to a case disobeys a judge, they have plausible deniability: they interpret the order differently, they didn’t get it in time, etc. I know from working for an immigration lawyer that executive branch offices usually obey direct orders from a judge. If the executive branch says “We didn’t obey you! How are you going to enforce that?” we have a constitutional crisis.

Hitler dismantled German democracy in 53 days. We’re on day 87 of Trump II. Our democracy isn’t gone, but this is a big step toward disappearing it, along with those “Venezuelans”.

Sources: