'Shocked' judges stand up to Trump admin in avalanche of ICE cases: legal expert

President Donald Trump's Homeland Security officials are running into a brick wall in federal courts as they try to justify all the people they are snatching off the streets, MS NOW legal expert Lisa Rubin told Willie Geist on Thursday's edition of "Morning Joe."

"When it comes to immigration detention hearings in Minnesota federal courts ... of the 61 that came before judges last week, the Department of Justice and immigration enforcement lost all but one," said Geist. "So, Lisa, what are we talking about specifically here? What kind of cases are these?"

"We're talking about what's called habeas cases," said Rubin. "And technically that means basically a petition to be released. We're talking about immigrants who were detained, almost all of them as part of Operation Metro Surge. And our colleague Fallon Gallagher and I had this idea. We know that what's been happening on the streets of Minnesota is extraordinary, and we have seen some high profile cases, including the one brought by Minnesota and the Twin Cities, to block the continued operation of Metro Surge."

When they took a look at those habeas cases, the numbers were revealing, she continued.

"As you noted, there were 61 of them and 60 of them the immigrants won," Rubin said. "And what they won was either their release in 40 of these cases, or they got an order from a judge saying, you have to have a bond hearing for these people. If you don't have a bond hearing, you must release them in X number of days in some of the cases. But 40 of the cases, 40 of these 61 cases, you have federal district judges and Minnesota saying this person must be released. Why? Because either there was no administrative or judicial warrant when you arrested them, you didn't give them the hearing to which they were entitled by due process."

"And in many of the cases that we saw, Willie, I think these are the most heartbreaking of all, people had reason to be in the country lawfully," she added. "We found one case of someone who is a DACA recipient. That's the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or the Dreamer cases. We had one DACA recipient. We had someone who had a determination that they were a victim of violence under the Violence Against Women Act and therefore had authorization to work and remain in the country lawfully. We also found instances where people were taken literally as they were going to pick up medication. There was one woman, a Kenyan woman went to a CVS to pick up her seizure medication, taken right there."

"In all of these cases, judges of both political stripes of varied professional backgrounds are saying this is enough. This may not happen," Rubin said. "We were shocked at both the quantity and the results of this body of cases."

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