Awful as things are under Trump 2.0, they’d be far worse still without the courage of some federal judges willing to rule against the administration. James Boasberg ruled that Trump administration officials could face criminal charges for deporting migrants. John McConnell ruled that the administration had overstepped its bounds in freezing a variety of federal grants. These so-called activist judges have stood strong in the face of threats against them and their families. In truth they’re not activists, but jurists who insist that the law still matters in this country.
Probably none have been stronger, or more high-profile, than Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for Maryland. She has emerged as a staunch defender of American law amid the administration’s campaign to undermine the judiciary so it can stuff immigrants in foreign gulags. A judge for whom she clerked once described her as a “model” for how judges should act.
Xinis first became a target for conservatives around a decade ago, after she was nominated for her current position by former President Barack Obama, because her law firm had represented the family of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Baltimore man who had died from a spinal cord injury after receiving a “rough ride” by that city’s police. She ultimately won the support of 10 Senate Republicans for confirmation, including Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell.
During the first Trump administration, Xinis blocked rules that would have made it harder for asylum-seekers to receive work authorization. When issuing her preliminary injunction in CASA de Maryland v. Wolf in 2020, Xinis argued that the government had “simply paid lip service” to the immense economic hardship the provisions would inflict on immigrants. A discerning eye for the government’s bullshit is the very skill that marks Xinis as a fixture in the resistance against the second Trump administration.
The president’s brutal, theatrical crackdown on immigration flourishes in that insidious space between the government’s claims and reality. In March, the administration deported three planeloads of immigrants it claimed were dangerous gang members to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, knowing that around half of them had no criminal record at all. Among the deported was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father of three living legally in Maryland who had been boarded onto one of the planes to El Salvador as the result of an “administrative error,” and in violation of a prior order preventing his removal.
Xinis ordered that the government correct its “grievous error” and “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Abrego Garcia. But despite the Supreme Court’s approval, it quickly became clear that the Trump administration had no intention of complying with her order, claiming it could not “effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return because he was no longer in the custody of the United States.
The Trump administration claimed privilege upon privilege to evade the judge’s requests for information. Xinis refused to simply take the government at its word, batted aside lawyers’ weak excuses, and demanded actual answers. In one excoriating filing, she accused the government of a “bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations,” and said lawyers had relied on “vague and unsubstantiated assertions of privilege” to “obstruct discovery and evade compliance.” As the government stalled, she declared from the bench: “It is a fact now of this record that every day Mr. Garcia is detained in CECOT is a day of irreparable harm.”
Months later, Abrego Garcia was miraculously returned to the United States to face charges related to illegally transporting undocumented immigrants for cash. But Xinis is still hounding government lawyers. When the government moved to deport Abrego Garcia to Uganda in late August, Xinis forbade his immediate removal, and said that federal law may require him to be removed to a country of his choice.
Through her tireless efforts, Xinis has exposed the government’s pitiful response to its own mistakes, which vary from simple ineptitude to willful noncompliance. The government’s handling of Abrego Garcia has highlighted the depravity of Donald Trump’s blatant campaign to undermine the courts. Throughout it all, Xinis has consistently held the government’s feet to the flame.
