by
Joel
Angel
Juarez/Getty
Images)
Judge
Fred
Biery
of
the
Western
District
of
Texas
issued
an
order
releasing
five-year-old
Liam
Conejo
Ramos
and
his
father
Adrian
Conejo
Arias
from
the
Dilley
Immigration
Processing
Center.
Liam
became
a
symbol
of
the
human
cost
of
the
Trump
administration’s
occupying
surge
in
Minnesota
when
a
camera
caught
him
standing
in
the
cold
with
a
blue
bunny
hat
and
backpack
while
government
agents
arrested
the
child.
Judge
Biery’s
short,
poignant
order
delivers
a
comprehensive
civics
lesson
laced
with
contempt
for
what
the
judge
calls
“the
perfidious
lust
for
unbridled
power.”
Trump
supporters
quickly
launched
into
mocking
the
judge.
This
is
extra
funny
when
you
remember
Mizelle’s
wife
is
a
federal
judge
with
a
not
qualified
rating
from
the
ABA.
That
said,
the
order
is
“SIGNED
this
31st
day
of
February,
2026.”
Which
is,
of
course,
not
a
date.
But
it’s
also
a
pretty
easy
error
to
understand.
The
judge
probably
expected
to
drop
the
order
on
February
1
(or
the
2nd),
perhaps
after
padding
the
sparse
document
with
some
additional
facts
and
analysis,
but
ultimately
decided
there’s
no
time
like
the
present
to
free
a
five-year-old
from
an
internment
camp.
He
slapped
a
“31”
into
the
date
slot
and
forgot
to
change
the
month.
It
doesn’t
change
the
substance
of
the
ruling,
but
it
does
give
the
administration’s
boosters
—
for
whom
“substantive
legal
reasoning”
might
be
the
only
foreign
concept
they
hate
more
than
immigrants
—
a
sad
artifact
to
hang
their
criticism
upon.
Judge
Biery
may
have
fired
off
a
bare
bones
opinion,
but
it
only
takes
a
handful
of
sentences
to
lay
out
the
legal
issue:
Civics
lesson
to
the
government:
Administrative
warrants
issued
by
the
executive
branch
to
itself
do
not
pass
probable
cause
muster.
That
is
called
the
fox
guarding
the
henhouse.
The
Constitution
requires
an
independent
judicial
officer.
This
is,
of
course,
exactly
right.
ICE
has
been
conducting
enforcement
actions
based
on
administrative
warrants
—
essentially
permission
slips
the
executive
branch
writes
for
itself
—
rather
than
judicial
warrants
supported
by
probable
cause.
The
Fourth
Amendment
requires
the
latter.
This
has
always
been
the
case,
and
the
administration
keeps
lying
about
it.
Judge
Biery
notes
that
Liam
may
ultimately
end
up
being
thrown
out
of
the
country,
but
it
not
without
due
process.
Ultimately,
Petitioners
may,
because
of
the
arcane
United
States
immigration
system,
return
to
their
home
country,
involuntarily
or
by
self-deportation.
But
that
result
should
occur
through
a
more
orderly
and
humane
policy
than
currently
in
place.
And
that’s
the
most
important
takeaway.
As
conservatives
sneer
at
this
opinion,
they
aren’t
angry
about
this
family’s
immigration
status,
they’re
angry
at
the
premise
that
the
administration
has
to
follow
rules
at
all.
Is
the
opinion
a
little
self-indulgent?
Sure.
Quoting
the
Magna
Carta
and
the
Declaration
of
Independence
and
Ben
Franklin’s
“a
republic,
if
you
can
keep
it”
might
be
over
the
top,
but
no
one
benefits
from
normalizing
the
abnormal.
When
the
government
takes
the
position
that
it
writes
its
own
warrants,
there
aren’t
a
lot
of
relevant
analogs
beyond
the
founding.
But
it’s
hard
to
convey
how
utterly
bleak
this
is.
A
78-year-old
judge,
the
oldest
active
judge
in
his
district,
casts
himself
as
the
“judicial
finger
in
the
constitutional
dike.”
It’s
both
an
acknowledgement
that
the
federal
district
courts
remain
the
tenuous
check
against
authoritarianism
and
an
implicit
prediction
that
the
waves
will
crash
through
once
the
Fifth
Circuit
gets
involved.
Most
of
all,
it’s
a
level
of
dire
coming
from
a
veteran
jurist
that
sums
up
the
nihilistic
abyss
of
2026
America.
Joe
Patrice is
a
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editor
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Above
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Law
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Like
A
Lawyer.
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