The liberal media melted down Friday as the Department of Homeland Security’s top attorney, James Percival, criticized “the worst of the worst” activist judges who are blocking President Donald Trump from securing our borders and our homeland.
The public should be outraged — not by the rebuke of a top federal official, but by the judges who are overstepping their authority and putting us in danger.
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Trump is doing what people reelected him to do: secure our southern border and deport the tens of millions of illegal immigrants who were allowed in this country by the Biden administration and previous administrations. But a small number of activist federal judges have issued rulings contrary to the law that have made this a lot more difficult, frustrating the will of the voters.
The examples are especially shocking when you get past the liberal media spin. The Trump administration has now repeatedly won at the Supreme Court on the president’s ability to end temporary protected status for immigrants from specific countries. For example, people allowed to come here temporarily after the 1991 violence in Somalia are still here 35 years later. Some 50,000 Hondurans were permitted to come here after Hurricane Mitch in 1999 — Trump ended their temporary status last year. The administration was sued for finally ending TPS for multiple countries, and the Supreme Court upheld the Trump position that temporary means temporary. Yet today, rogue judges in Massachusetts and Illinois continue to deny the president the ability to terminate TPS.
An even more ridiculous example is that the federal government still has not been allowed to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal immigrant who has no legal right to be here. Why? Because a district judge ordered Garcia, a suspected gang member, released into the United States. The Trump administration is appealing that ruling, too, spending valuable time and taxpayer dollars defeating yet another activist ruling by a rogue judge.
Rather than defend these indefensible judicial rulings, the liberal media are attempting a sleight-of-hand trick and are attacking Percival for criticizing judges by name. Not only is this laughably hypocritical — U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani targeted Percival directly in an official judicial opinion — but Percival is also well within his rights and within the American tradition to criticize judges for their rulings. President Thomas Jefferson attacked the “twistifications” of Chief Justice John Marshall and oversaw the impeachment of the highly partisan Judge Samuel Chase. President Franklin Roosevelt repeatedly attacked the Supreme Court’s conservatives and called for “action to save the Constitution from the court.” Then-Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln even alleged a conspiracy between the chief justice and a Democratic president.
Even some of the Left’s greatest heroes have said far more bombastic things than the Trump DHS has ever said, and they did so without journalists hyperventilating. Former President Barack Obama broke centuries of precedent by castigating the Supreme Court in person during the State of the Union address over the Citizens United case, causing a visible reaction of disbelief by Justice Samuel Alito. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) all-but-threatened Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh by name that “you will pay a price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Sure enough, deranged leftists have attempted to murder Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett ever since that hateful speech, yet we never hear the media call for Schumer to exercise civility.
By now, the Left’s playbook is obvious: Activist judges usurp power that they do not have to block the Trump administration, and then liberals in the media run interference for them, distracting the public and policymakers with manufactured outrage. The goal is to run out the clock on the Trump era in hopes of a Democratic president who will reopen the border and import new tens of millions of left-wing voters. The critics tell Percival to simply appeal these rulings without criticizing judges, but the appeals cost the DHS months of time in a brief four-year presidential term, which is exactly what the Left wants. The public needs to know the truth that its will is being thwarted by activist judges.
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As the DHS’s top lawyer, Percival is right to call out rogue district judges and make clear that activist rulings will be appealed, and, ultimately, overturned by the higher courts. I held Percival’s job during the first Trump administration, and I faced many of the same challenges from activist judges. The DHS has an obligation to correct misinformation and false impressions in the public, especially those that will encourage more illegal immigration, visa overstays, and other lawbreaking.
Judges are public servants with a public trust, and the Constitution says that they are to hold their positions only on condition of “good behavior.” The vast majority of judges serve with honor and apply the law to the facts of the case before them, but a few have overstepped their bounds, seized power that they do not have, and issued faulty rulings binding the entire executive branch of government. The Trump administration must continue to call them out, continue to get their rulings overturned, and continue to carry out the mandate of the voters. Either America will finish the fight against illegal immigration, or illegal immigration will finish America.
Chad R. Mizelle is the former chief of staff to the attorney general, former acting general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, former chief of staff at the DHS, and former associate counsel to President Donald Trump. Previously, Mizelle clerked on the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals.
