At a House Judiciary Committee hearing before the Congressional recess, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) defended the nationwide injunctions against President Trump.
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00:00Consider that the very reason that Donald Trump has faced more nationwide injunctions than Joe
00:05Biden is precisely because Trump is grabbing unprecedented power from Congress and from the
00:12judiciary, power that is not accorded to any president because we do not have kings in this
00:18country. If you try to eliminate birthright citizenship, jail people for free speech,
00:24slash funding and fire people, and eliminate departments that are actually established by
00:29Congress, if you try to use Cold War era regulations to do mass deportations, then yeah, you're going to
00:35get nationwide injunctions. So maybe if you don't like the injunctions, stop doing the illegal stuff.
00:42The argument that the judiciary has run amok is a very convenient political argument that's being
00:49weaponized to eliminate the fundamental checks and balances that our founders put in place to protect
00:54the independence of the judiciary from the political branches of government. If there are threats to
01:00the independence of the judiciary, they come when unelected billionaires try to buy court seats. They
01:06come when there is no ethics code that stops justices from being captured by special interests. The lower
01:13courts have played a critical role in this independence from political systems, delivering results that people
01:19from both parties have liked and disliked. During the Obama and Biden administration, lower courts did rule
01:25against the government in cases dealing with student debt relief and DACA. Courts have also ruled in favor
01:31of guns, religious liberty, and abortion restrictions. Democrats may not have liked those rulings, but we did not
01:38simply try to eliminate those courts or impeach those judges. And did you ever hear Republicans complaining
01:45about the judiciary when those favorable rulings were coming about? Of course not. One of the most
01:51important roles of an independent judiciary is upholding civil rights and liberties. The judiciary
01:56is often the last line of defense for protecting the vulnerable from the powerful and the minority from
02:02the majority. This is particularly true when it comes to immigration. Last night, we learned that the
02:08Trump administration mistakenly deported a father with protected legal status. This is the
02:15latest amongst numerous questionable deportations, including men being deported for having tattoos,
02:21for autism awareness, and the names of close family members. Trump's basis for these deportations is the
02:28Alien Enemies Act of 1798. This statute authorizes the president to detain and deport non-citizens when there
02:35is, quote, a declared war or an invasion or predatory incursion, end quote, by a, quote, foreign nation or
02:44government. Professor Shaw, could you briefly explain why the courts have determined why there is no
02:50appropriate basis for Trump to invoke the Alien Enemies Act? Well, I should say it's all in a very
02:56preliminary posture. But Judge Boseberg issued his initial temporary restraining order essentially on the
03:03grounds that individuals who were subject to this deportation on the basis of this invocation of a, you know,
03:091798 statute that has been used three times in our history, needed some opportunity to contest or present
03:16evidence before being sent to prisons in El Salvador. So this was, just to be really clear,
03:22Judge Boseberg did not order anyone's release inside the United States. Everyone is able to stay in U.S.
03:28custody. It was simply a determination that the basic demands of due process were not suspended by the
03:33invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. And why are those due process rights so important in the
03:38immigration context in particular? Well, so I think that the example that you gave,
03:43Congresswoman, of this reporting we saw last night of an individual who appears to have been
03:47incorrectly seized and sent to a prison, you know, maybe there was some other basis but not the
03:54specific Alien Enemies Act invocation basis for deporting him, makes clear that the stakes kind of
04:00couldn't be higher than in the immigration context, especially if we're talking about
04:03not just detention but deportation and expulsion. So, you know, due process protects us from being
04:10summarily deprived of life, liberty, or property. And, you know, those interests in some ways are at
04:15their highest when we're talking about the government taking custody and potentially expelling an
04:20individual. And this law was used, wasn't it? It was invoked by President Franklin D. Roosevelt
04:25to detain 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II? That's right. It was part of
04:31the basis of the detention and internment of Japanese Americans. And so these actions don't
04:35just affect foreigners. What's at stake are constitutional rights for all Americans? Can you
04:40explain to any American who might be watching this hearing why they should be concerned about their
04:46rights given what the Trump administration is doing? Right. I mean, I think that the Constitution
04:50is the only thing standing between any of us and being summarily placed on a plane. And judges are
04:57the ones who are often in the position of enforcing those constitutional rights. So this is not about
05:02protecting an other, right? This is about protecting all of us. And if the administration is not duty-bound
05:10to respect the basic requirements of the Constitution with respect to these individuals, it's not clear why
05:15it's duty-bound to respect those rights as to any of us. I think that is a very important point. And I
05:21think we should be focusing our attention on how to best preserve our independent judiciary, not
05:26delegitimize it. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to submit an article, seek unanimous consent to submit an article
05:31for the record. This is from The Atlantic. An administrative error sends a Maryland father to a
05:38Salvadorian prison. Without objection, so ordered. Thank you. I yield back.
05:42The General Lady yields back.