White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went on yet another angry tirade against federal judges who rule against Donald Trump.
During an appearance on Fox News Thursday night, Leavitt was asked to respond to a federal judge who blocked the removal of the wife and five children of a man charged in a firebombing attack against peaceful protesters in Boulder, Colorado. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had the family arrested despite having no evidence that they were involved in the attack.
Leavitt, who regularly rails against anyone who opposes Trump, was predictably incensed.
“Well, this is just another rogue decision by a rogue judge who is trying to be—I don’t know—the president of the United States? The secretary of state? The secretary of homeland security?” Leavitt said. “Surely, these important matters of both homeland security and national security do not belong to lower district, local judges in these districts across the country.”
Leavitt’s insistence that federal judges, whom she attempted to dismiss as “local,” don’t have the jurisdiction to rule against Trump betrays a failure to grasp the whole “checks and balances” part of the U.S. Constitution.
Leavitt continued, once again complaining about another federal judge who had blocked the unlawful deportation of immigrants to South Sudan, and supposedly stranded some ICE agents in a “dangerous part of the world.” (The judge did not specifically say that the agents needed to stay overseas, which means the government is choosing not to bring them back.)
“Lower district court judges do not get to dictate the foreign policy and the national security interests of the United States of America. We can’t run a country if the executive is not allowed to freely exercise its powers, and that’s what we’re seeing take place,” Leavitt said.
Unfortunately for the Trump administration, the hits to its illegal immigration agenda just keep on coming. A federal judge on Thursday blocked the arrest and removal of Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student and green card holder who was targeted by the administration over her involvement in pro-Palestinian protests. In a brutal hearing, U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald called the government’s position “disturbing” and “disappointing.”
“This is a new world. I’m a little taken aback,” Reice Buchwald said.