The 1952 law attempting to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident who helped the Trump administration organize the protests at Columbia University, has been rarely tested.
Mainly, but not perfect. It was determined in 1996 by President Trump's sister.
Trump is not very useful to many judges. For example, last week he sought out the bullet each of “many bent judges I'm forced to show up ahead.” However, he highly praised his sister, Judge Maryne Trump Barry.
“I will never forget to come to me many times and say, 'Your sister was the smartest person in the courtroom,'” he posted on social media when he passed away in 2023.
When Judge Barry considered the 1952 law that said the Trump administration would play a major role in its deportation program, she asked whether it could be quadrilateral with the constitution. “The answer,” she wrote.
As Judge Barry was a federal judge at the time, her decision did not establish the binding force of precedents to other courts. In any case, the Court of Appeal later reversed her decision on grounds that were unrelated to its substance.
But it remains the most thorough judicial investigation into the constitutionality of the law, and other judges may find the reasoning to be compelling.
The incident involved Mario Lewis Mash, a former Mexican official who the Clinton administration tried to deport him to Mexico. Warren M. Christopher, then Secretary of State, told Lewis Mash exactly what Secretary of State Marco Rubio said to Halil.
The verdict was calm, Judge Barry wrote. Barry was appointed to the U.S. District Court in New Jersey by President Ronald Reagan after lobbying by Trump's leader and fixer Roy M. Korn.
The law wrote that if “the mere presence of that person here affects any cause of influence on the interests of US foreign policy,” it “gives it at a free and unreviewed discretion to legally enforce a foreigner within the United States.”
It violated the constitution in at least two ways, Judge Barry wrote. First, she said it was too vague to inform people about what it banned.
Under the law, she writes: Legal Aliens, whether they visit or reside here for a day or 50 years, should fear that the Secretary of State will always inform us that our foreign policy requires deportation to a particular country for reasons unknown to them. ”
She emphasized that the law applies to “lifetime permanent residents.”
“For those who have been in this country for quite some time,” she wrote.
Judge Barry offered a second reason to remove the law, granting him full discretion, saying it was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the Secretary of State.
The law, she wrote, violated the doctrine of secularism, which prohibits the parliament from giving too much room to office officials who have been under-learned. This doctrine has been largely dormant since 1935, when the Supreme Court used it to break the New Deal Act. However, members of the court's conservative majority have expressed interest in reviving the doctrine.
The Supreme Court will hear debate on Wednesday regarding the scope of doctrine in unrelated cases.
Judge Barry's decision was overturned in 1999 by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, an participating court, after being appointed by President Bill Clinton. The author of the Court of Appeals' opinion was Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., who joined the Supreme Court in 2006.
Judge Alito did not mention Justice Barry's constitutional ruling, saying instead that Lewis Mash had pursued his claims in the wrong forum. “We do not reach the merits of constitutional questions decided by the district court,” he wrote.
In his later years, Judge Barry lamented the brothers' policies, particularly his separation from immigrant parents in his first administration. In a conversation secretly recorded by Mary L. Trump of her nie and published in the Washington Post, Judge Barry said she speculated that her brother “has not read my immigrant opinions.”
