#due-process
5 entries with this tag
A U.S. Judge Barred Deporting a Young Afghan Man to Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan, Where His Family Was Already Being Threatened Because His Brothers Had Helped the American Military — One Served in the Afghan Army, Another Was a U.S.-Trained Pilot the Taliban Killed — So the Trump Administration Deported Him to the Central African Republic Instead
The United States made a promise to the Afghans who risked their lives helping its military: that it would not abandon them to the Taliban. In late August 2026, the Trump administration broke that promise in a way designed to slip past a court. According to the Associated Press, the U.S. deported dozens of people to the Central African Republic — among them an Afghan man in his early twenties whose brothers had aided the American war effort. One brother served in the Afghan National Army that fought alongside U.S. forces; another was a pilot trained by the United States and was killed by the Taliban. Because of that work, the family in Afghanistan had received Taliban threats. A U.S. judge, recognizing the danger, had granted the young man protection against being deported to Afghanistan. So the administration did not send him to Afghanistan — it sent him to the Central African Republic, a country wracked by instability to which he has no connection, using a third-country deportation to achieve the removal the court had blocked in all but name. It is two failures at once: the betrayal of a family that bled for the United States, and the circumvention of a judge's order meant to keep a person alive. This is not an isolated case. The administration has effectively ended the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program and put roughly 11,000 Afghans on Temporary Protected Status at risk of removal — a systematic abandonment of America's wartime allies.
The U.S. Military Has Blown Up More Than 220 People on Alleged Drug Boats — Without Trial, Warning, or Public Evidence — Under a Secret Legal Memo Experts Call "a License to Kill." Now a Pentagon Report Claims It Killed Zero Civilians, a New Yorker Investigation Points to an Innocent Ecuadorian Fishing Boat, and the Prosecutor Investigating the Strikes Was Assassinated
Since September 2025, the Trump administration has carried out a campaign of lethal military strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, and now on land in Latin America — killing more than 220 people it labels "narcoterrorists," without trial, without warning, and without publicly showing the evidence. Legal experts across the spectrum call the strikes extrajudicial killings inconsistent with international law: the administration asserts, in a secret legal memo, that the victims are "unlawful combatants" in a "non-international armed conflict" between the United States and a classified list of drug cartels. Former Defense Department attorney Sarah Harrison said the policy asserts "a license to kill"; former State Department lawyer Charlie Trumbull called it "more problematic than Iran" because it rests on "the president just waving a magic wand"; Rep. Jason Crow, who reviewed the memo, called it "a pretty farcical analysis." Now the accountability is collapsing on every front at once. In August 2026, the Pentagon released a review claiming its 2025 strikes killed no civilians — a report The Intercept called a "total whitewash," given the more than 120 civilians documented killed. A New Yorker investigation into the disappearance of the Ecuadorian fishing vessel Fiorella suggests the U.S. is striking boats it will not even acknowledge, opening a "hidden front" under Operation Southern Spear. And an Ecuadorian prosecutor investigating the boat strikes was assassinated. Rights groups, the families of dead men, and the Pentagon's own inspector general are all now demanding answers the administration is fighting to withhold.
DOJ Admits ICE Courthouse Arrests Based on "Erroneous" Legal Authority
The DOJ admitted it wrongly used an ICE memo to justify arresting hundreds of immigrants at immigration courthouses. The memo only applied to criminal courts, not immigration courts. The DOJ blamed ICE. DHS said arrests would continue anyway.
Alien Enemies Act Deportations to CECOT Prison
Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans to El Salvador's notorious CECOT mega-prison without due process. Courts found the deportations violated due process and held the administration in contempt.
Wrongful Deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia
A Maryland man with explicit court-ordered protection from deportation was mistakenly deported to El Salvador's CECOT prison. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 the government must facilitate his return. Trump defied the ruling for months.