A number of major cases challenging President Trump’s initial moves on immigration are making their way through the legal system. Mr. Trump has moved aggressively to detain and deport migrants, but a series of his moves have been challenged in court. In a number of those cases, federal judges have responded by ordering the Trump administration to give due process to people being deported. The administration has dragged its feet to avoid some of those rulings, setting up a potential constitutional clash between the executive and judiciary branches.
Here’s a look at where some of the biggest cases stand, and what comes next.
Birthright Citizenship
Where It Stands
On his first day back in office, Mr. Trump issued an executive order ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and foreign residents. Birthright citizenship, the guarantee that a person born in the United States is automatically a citizen, has long been considered a central tenet of the United States.
The 14th Amendment, which was ratified after the Civil War, declares that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” The Supreme Court affirmed the guarantee of automatic citizenship for nearly all children born in the United States in 1898 in the case of Wong Kim Ark, where the justices found that under the 14th Amendment, Mr. Wong, who was born in 1873 to Chinese parents living in San Francisco, was a U.S. citizen.
The order prompted a flurry of lawsuits, including challenges by Democratic attorneys general and civil rights groups. Federal courts in Massachusetts, Maryland and Washington State issued temporary directives that paused the order for the entire country while court challenges continued. One federal judge called the order “blatantly unconstitutional.”
What Comes Next
The Trump administration pushed back against the nationwide pause on the policy, filing an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. The administration asked the court to lift the pause and allow the policy to go into effect in states that had not challenged it.
In a rare move, the justices announced they would hear oral arguments in the matter on May 15. They deferred any decision on the nationwide pause until after the arguments, leaving it in place for now.
Alien Enemies Act
Where It Stands
There are currently at least five lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s use of a powerful wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan immigrants accused of being members of Tren de Aragua, a violent street gang.
Most of the cases were filed after the Supreme Court ruled that the immigrants must be allowed to challenge their deportations under the act before they are removed from the country. The court said those cases should be filed where the migrants are being detained.
The lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court’s decision was brought in March in Washington, D.C., after immigration lawyers learned that the White House was preparing to fly nearly 140 Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador without any due process.
A federal judge in Washington, James E. Boasberg, told the administration to stop the flights from departing on March 15, but they did anyway, raising questions about whether administration officials had willfully disobeyed his order.
What Comes Next
The cases outside Washington — in Colorado, Texas and New York — are likely to move forward in the weeks to come in a fairly normal manner as lawyers for the immigrants and lawyers for the Justice Department argue over two main issues: Can the Alien Enemies Act be used in peacetime, and to deport people who are not obviously members of a hostile foreign nation? And can the administration sustain its claims that the Venezuelan men it wants to deport are actually members of Tren de Aragua?
Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union are trying to revive the case in Washington in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in an effort to get due process for the Venezuelan men who are no longer on U.S. soil.
Additionally, Judge Boasberg has threatened to open an investigation into who in the administration was responsible for the “willful disregard” shown for his initial order about the deportation flights, unless Trump officials do something they have resisted for a month: figure out how to allow the Venezuelans in custody in El Salvador to retroactively challenge their deportations.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia
Where It Stands
A federal appeals court in Virginia reaffirmed on Thursday that the Trump administration had to play a more active role in seeking the release of a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, from the same Salvadoran prison where the Venezuelan men were sent. The Justice Department has already acknowledged that Mr. Abrego Garcia was flown to the prison in error on March 15 despite a court order expressly forbidding that he be sent there.
The ruling by the appeals court was the third judicial order — including one from the Supreme Court — that directed the White House to “facilitate” the release of Mr. Abrego Garcia from Salvadoran custody and figure out a way to give him the due process that he would have been afforded had he not been wrongfully deported.
But Trump officials have spent the better part of the three weeks trying various methods to avoid complying with those orders.
What Comes Next
In the near term, Judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing the case in Federal District Court in Maryland, will conduct an inquiry — not unlike Judge Boasberg’s — into who, if anyone, inside the Trump administration is responsible for the way the White House has delayed complying with the various rulings in the case.
Ultimately, the courts may also have to decide what it actually means to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has said he will not set the Maryland man free.
The Justice Department has taken a narrow view of the matter, saying it could comply with court orders simply by helping Mr. Abrego Garcia enter the United States if he was released from the Salvadoran prison and made his way to a U.S. port of entry.
But the appeals court in Virginia disagreed, saying that “‘facilitate’ is an active verb” and does not “allow the government to do essentially nothing.”
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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