Trump Administration Sues Maryland Federal Judges Over Immigration Rule

In late May, as two high-stakes deportation cases were playing out in federal courthouses in Maryland, the district’s chief judge, George L. Russell III, issued an unusual new standing rule.

Moving forward, Judge Russell said, any immigrant who sought to challenge their removal from the country by filing what is known as a habeas petition would be automatically granted a temporary order stopping the government from expelling them for at least one day.

On Tuesday evening, the Trump administration took an even more unusual step to kill Judge Russell’s unusual move: It filed a lawsuit against him and the other 14 federal judges who serve on the bench in Maryland, seeking a court order that would block the standing rule.

In a 22-page complaint, lawyers for the Justice Department noted — as many administration officials have in recent weeks — that courts across the country have issued an avalanche of injunctions against various parts of President Trump’s agenda almost from the moment that he returned to office.

The lawyers sought to set their suit against Judge Russell and his colleagues in that context, saying that the new standing rule intruded on the White House’s inherent powers to “enforce the nation’s immigration laws.”

“This lawsuit involves yet another regrettable example of the unlawful use of equitable powers to restrain the executive,” the lawyers wrote. “Specifically, defendants have instituted an avowedly automatic injunction against the federal government, issued outside the context of any particular case or controversy.”