In Texas Borderland, Trump’s immigration -Push is already suffering from his worst legal defeat

Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a spectacular, gently spoken The 56-year-old nominated by President Trump, aimed his leather chairman with a high back to a government lawyer in the federal courthouse in Brownsville, Texas and asked a question. Can the president define what if an invasion counts, then explain that an invasion is happening and then use a War Powers law from 1798 to expel the so-called intruders?

“Yes,” replied Michael Velchik, a lawyer from the Ministry of Justice.

Judge Rodriguez followed: Would that not make Mr Trump’s powers under the law in wartime, the alien enemies act, “effectively unlimited?”

The question hinted at a pioneering ruling that Judge Rodriguez made on Thursday when he discovered that Mr Trump was wrong to claim that the activities of TREN de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang in the United States, amounted to an “invasion” that the righteous law on the war law.

The decision was the most radical statement issued so far by a federal court that blocked the most aggressive tap of Mr Trump’s efforts, one that was already Is used to deport Almost 140 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador on March 15. After a decision by the Supreme Court, it will be at the beginning of April that Venezuelan prisoners are confronted with potential deportation Under the Alien Enemies -Act can submit lawsuits In the district courts where they were held.

The result of the court’s order is that challenges for an important part of Mr Trump’s immigration agenda, who started in Washington, spread throughout the country, Fill the dockets From federal judges and the drawing of tough and skeptical questions – even of lawyers with impeccable conservative references.

The command of Judge Rodriguez came after five other jury members heard challenges of prisoners related to the Alien Enemies ACT issued temporary orders that blocked deportations for some or all in their districts. In Colorado, a Judge thought that There can be no “invasion” without “military and wartime action” and that the administration “wrongly” had been familiar with the words as a legal basis for deportations.

Texas, with its extensive network of immigration and customs enforcement facilities, is starting to play a major role in the court case. Judge Rodriguez is one of the three judges in Texas who have so far heard challenges of groups of Venezuelans. When one of his colleagues, judge James Wesley Hendrix in the northern district of Texas, refused to stop the approaching deportation of another group of Venezuelans who was held in the Bluebonnet facility in Anson, the Supreme Court stepped into and issued an emergency order that blocked it.

In another case, Judge David Briones of the Western District of Texas ordered the immediate release of a Venezuelan couple, and rejects the government’s claims that they were members of Tren de Aragua.

The cases in Texas are also remarkable because federal courts are assessed there by the US Court of Appeal for the Fifth Circuit, the most aggressive Conservative Court of Appeal, which has issued a number of judgments to support the hard immigration policy.

The possibility of appealing to the fifth circuit has caused the perception that Texas courts can offer Mr. Trump the best chance of winning statements that enable the plan of his administration to scale up mass deportations to move forward.

That makes the skepticism with which he is particularly confronted there, said Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. “The administration might be reckless to fight so hard to make these things heard in Texas,” he said. “There are some legal questions about what reasonable judges from the entire ideological spectrum will disagree. But whether we will be introduced by – or otherwise at war with – the Aragua is simply not one of them.”

A spokesperson for the White House did not respond to a request for comments.

The origin of the case before Judge Rodriguez dates until March 14 in the El Valle Detention Center, 50 miles north of Brownsville. From there two buses with more than 200 men on their way to the airport in Harlingen, and from there to El Salvador, despite an order from another judge in Washington, James E. Boasberg, who had to return.

Mr. Trump has trained his anger at Right Boasberg and paints him like a radical liberal. The president may have hoped for a friendlier reception for Judge Rodriguez, where three of the men tried to sue after the pronunciation of the Supreme Court.

Judge Rodriguez is less than a mile of the Mexican border. Every weekday, a floor of his courtroom, American Marshals bring a parade of border crossers forward, some in orange prison floods, some still in the street clothing that they were arrested in hours earlier. On Thursday they stood five and six at the same time in front of a magistrate judge who took sips from a Whataburger Cup, while some men were standing for their starters and sang others to their rights to a juric court and plead guilty.

Yet Judge Rodriguez did not immediately embrace the drastic measures that take the administration to restore the immigration system, a sign that Mr Trump’s claims can be too fat for some of his judicial nominees about the size of his own power.

Two weeks before the hearing, Judge Rodriguez had given a temporary restraining order that forbade the government to use the Alien Enemies act to deport the three claimants or another El Valle prisoner.

The break with Mr. Trump was surprising, said Jodi Goodwin, an immigration lawyer in Brownsville who often appears in court. Of the two federal judges of Brownsville, Mrs. Goodwin said that judge Rodriguez was known as ‘the more conservative, stricter judge’.

Judge Rodriguez, who refused to comment on this article, was the first Latino chosen by Mr Trump for the Federal Bank. During his confirmation hearing in 2017, the judge spoke about raised by a single mother and lived near the poverty line. He went to Yale, the first in his family who went to a four -year college, then the University of Texas Law School, and then went to make a partner at Baker Botts, a powerful company in Houston. For eight years he worked abroad for the International Justice Mission, an evangelical Christian group that fights against human trafficking. “All these experiences,” he told the Senate, “enables me to empathize with the vulnerable, the poor and the disadvantaged.”

During the hearing of immigration, Judge Rodriguez followed a careful, curious approach when he investigated the claims about the word ‘invasion’, a crucial term of both the status and proclamation of Mr Trump on March 14, on the War Powers law. The judge said he was looking for “the clear, ordinary meaning” of the word as it was understood in 1798.

Mr Velchik said that “invasion” and “predatory raid” can be applied to non -state actors such as “Indian tribes” and “Barbary Pirates.” But when Judge Rodriguez asked him to support it with ‘sources from that time’, Mr Velchik became empty. The attempt to distinguish the original meaning of the law, a staple of conservative case law that has been used to protect the rights of arms owners and to limit access to abortion, now seemed to work against the agenda of the administration.

Elsewhere in Brownsville there were broader questions about whether Mr Trump’s approach was consistent with the local tradition. In February, immigration and customs enforcement fell to Abby’s Bakery, a pastry shop at 16 miles from Brownsville. They discovered employees who lived on the owners’ owners. Two had no papers, according to a complaint that was submitted before the court; Six had Visa to visit the United States, but not to work. The two owners were accused of hosting aliens, a crime with a fine of a maximum of 10 years in prison. They have not argued guilty and their trial, even before Judge Rodriguez, is planned for July.

Jaime M. Diez, the lawyer who represents the bakery owners, said that the matter farmers had reluctant to work in the region for seasonal migrants who work as ranch hands for generations. “Everyone is scared,” he said. “They have arrested people left and right.”

Towards the end of the hearing, Judge Rodriguez investigated whether a government is planning to indicate prisoners only 12 hours to challenge their arrests, met an order of the Supreme Court that they must be allowed ‘reasonable time’ to complain. He asked how prisoners could challenge it. If they were quickly able to submit quickly in one way or another, they would not have been injured, he said. But if they could not submit, the government could fly to El Salvador, out of the reach of American courts.

“From my perspective there is a catch-22,” the judge said.

Mrs. Goodwin, the immigration lawyer, said that 12 hours was insufficient, given the demands on the time of the lawyers since Mr. Trump took office. “My customers are petrified,” she said. “Are they going to come to my house? Are they going to come to the schools? Can I go to the doctor? You are the lawyer. Can’t you do anything? ‘I spend so much time trying to calm fears. “

Muneer Ahmad, a professor at the Yale Law School that represents immigrants as part of the worker and immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic of the school, called the ruling “well -preserved” and “considerable” of Judge Rodriguez.

“For a judge appointed by Trump to rule so unambiguously that the call of the status was illegal,” he said, “I hope I will speed up the end of this legal charade.”

Alan Feuer Reporting contributed, and Kitty Bennett contributed research.