By Adam Liptak and Alan Feuer in the NYT
Ed note: I hope we all have a chance to read this beautiful 7 page ruling below from the conservative Judge Wilkson. It states in clear language that we all (citizens or not) have a right to have due process of the law when facing legal action against us. The language of the ruling is not only clear but draws an eloquent picture of how things should be between the President and the law. Hopefully, this document will live on.
A federal appeals court in Virginia issued a striking opinion on Thursday, reaffirming that the Trump administration had to take a more active approach in seeking the release of a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador last month despite a court order expressly forbidding him from being sent there.
But the opinion, authored by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a conservative jurist appointed by President Ronald Reagan, contained far more than simple legal instructions to the White House. The brief order also rebuked Trump officials for their apparent disregard of the bedrock principles of due process and for allowing a man whom they have acknowledged they wrongfully deported to continue to languish in a foreign prison.
At the same time, Judge Wilkinson, in an almost elegiac tone, gave an emphatic reminder that American democracy rests in part on mutual respect between the executive and judicial branches and lamented recent attacks by President Trump and his allies on the federal courts.
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