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which_chickA while back, I mockingly suggested how migrant detention was going to work in the (at the time) incoming Trump administration. I went over the top about it, in a Let's Eat The Irish Babies! style of thing.
When I checked back in a bit later, actual state governments had picked up the idea of #bountiesforillegals which I had mentioned as a beyond the pale, surely nobody would ever do this joke. IT WAS A JOKE.
I suggested detention centers. Also a joke. And Lo, Detention Centers are being built. I didn't say straight up that the migrants would be detained... indefinitely but I did kind of dance around it. See below:
I am not an immigration lawyer and I've never done the naturalization thing myself. I know nothing about this stuff. But this morning during the authorized news-viewing window, I read that the Fifth Circuit decided it was OK to detain migrants indefinitely. That doesn't sound very American to me, honestly. Isn't there some kind of habeas thing about this? Habeas corpus?
Latin is hard, but habeas corpus is a legal precedent from like the middle ages or some shit: a procedure that allows any person detained on a charge “without sufficient cause” to challenge their detention in court. It's in the Constitution, too. Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2 of the US Constitution reads, “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
Well, then. SHALL NOT BE SUSPENDED. It's right there in black and white. Done and dusted. So what happened?
In the spring of 2025, White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said the presidential administration (was) looking into suspending habeas corpus to detain and deport people from the U.S. . (source) Because the only exceptions offered in the Constitution are Rebellion and Invasion, probably they were planning on aiming for one of those exceptions. To make it seem more palatable and legal-ish, y'know, while they still have to pretend the Constitution matters.
Now, I don't watch very much of Dear Leader's administration talking because I want to avoid throwing my laptop across the room, but folks with stronger stomachs have been following the rhetoric and telling us about it because the words people use to talk about stuff... matter.
When an administration continually refers to migrant and refugee populations as illegal immigrants, that changes the discussion right off the bat. Illegal's right there in the phrase, innit, OF COURSE they are guilty of a lock-uppable-crime. Or when an administration calls illegal immigrants liberal bullshit words like undocumented residents or migrant workers or political refugees, all of those sound way better than illegal immigrant, right? So Dear Leader's administration has been using the "invasion" phrasing to set the stage, to prime the pump, to signal very clearly what kind of court ruling they're looking to get.
So, the phrasing is out there and the administration's desires are clear. The next thing they have to do is to go out and shop the courts. There are a lot of jurisdictions and judges and courts in the United States and it's quite possible that an administration can find one, somewhere, eventually, that can read the HUGE NEON BLINKING TEA LEAVES and is weak-willed enough or greedy enough or whatever-enough to provide the desired ruling on the flimsiest of legal pretexts. It may take a while, but the eventuality is almost guaranteed ... a million monkeys, a million typewriters, and the dangling banana of the administration clearly provides outsize rewards those who further its goals, a banana (republic) policy clearly evident in the metoric rise of the great legal mind Pam Bondi to Attorney General of the United States and the selection of Fox & Friends talking head Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of Defense or War or whatever they're calling it today.
The administration has been court shopping their "invasion" theory for a while. There's a nice article that came out by Reuters over the weekend detailing this. It says that courts have ruled ICE detentions illegal more than 4,000 times. MORE THAN FOUR THOUSAND TIMES, the courts have said, Nah, fam, habeas corpus is a real thing and you can't just lock people up indefinitely and yet... and yet... the administration has kept on trying because they know that one day, they are going to find their monkey, the one willing to take the banana. And that monkey will say Sure, bro, there's an INVASION going on. We see the news. We hear your phrasing. We know what you're looking for and we're here to give it to you.
Turns out that the correct monkeys work for the Fifth Circuit Court in (of course) Texas. Here's an article about the ruling.
And now, you sweet summer child who doesn't know very much about anything and clings to the faint hope that perhaps the courts are strong enough to withstand this bullshit ruling... you pipe up in your Cindy-Lou Who voice: But... but... this will get appealed, right?
Not quite how you think, Cindy-Lou Who, but yes. The administration needs a second, contrary ruling from another circuit court... so that they have the Fifth Circuit Court saying "OK To Detain Migrants Indefinitely, The Invasion Thing Is Legit" and some other Circuit Court saying "I call Bullshit, The Invasion Thing Is COMPLETELY UNFOUNDED AND STUPID." This is called a Circuit Split and it kicks the whole matter to a higher court.
The higher court, the court that is higher than the Circuit Courts, is the Supreme Court. The nine justices will have to (eventually) issue a ruling on the legality of the matter of "Does the current administration's invasion theory hold water for the suspension of habeas corpus for migrant detainees?"
This may take some time to percolate through the system (the courts are not fast) but it will be at least a 5-4 split but more likely a 6-3 split, with dissenting justices of Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Justice Boof Kavanaugh may well write the ruling -- he did for the Kavanaugh Stop (He hates that thing being named for him and therefore I use the terminology at absolutely every opportunity because he wrote a ruling allowing people to be detained for not lookingwhite American enough and he deserves to have people know it was him what done it, racist asshole that he is.) and he's probably dumb enough to do it again.
Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett belong to Trump. They're his appointees. Roberts, Alito (probably going to retire here directly so that Trump or lackeys can appoint another young fascist judge to replace him), and Thomas are fairly reliable conservatives.
Maybe one will defect, but certainly not two. It's going to be 6-3 or 5-4, but the permanent detention of migrants is going to happen in the United States of America. Dear Leader wants "invasion" and Dear Leader wants "permanent detention in camps" and so that's what is going to happen with the Supreme Court.
It's cute that you think anything other than that is going to happen, Cindy-Lou.
Let's hear it for concentration camps. I can't wait to find out what sort of forced labor the detainees will be doing.
Also, Pam... What about them Epstein Files? What? We're done with those? I though you had like three million more to go. What about the other three million files, Pam? How come non-minor, non-victim names were redacted IN VIOLATION OF THE LAW, Pam? Don't you care about arresting pedophiles, Pam? Pam? WHAT ABOUT THE PEDOPHILES, PAM?
When I checked back in a bit later, actual state governments had picked up the idea of #bountiesforillegals which I had mentioned as a beyond the pale, surely nobody would ever do this joke. IT WAS A JOKE.
I suggested detention centers. Also a joke. And Lo, Detention Centers are being built. I didn't say straight up that the migrants would be detained... indefinitely but I did kind of dance around it. See below:
Look, don't you get it? These will be workers who won't be subject to any sorts of (lol) "overtime" or "collective bargaining" or "OSHA" or ... come on, man, that shit's for citizens, not for illegals. So if they keep coming in, we'll keep putting them to work for us. :) And if it takes them a near-eternity to "earn" their way to "freedom", well... let's just say that it's the PROSPECT of freedom (and the guns, don't forget the guns) that will keep them working hard. The fact that only one in a thousand may ever get on a plane, and that for publicity reasons rather than, y'know, repatriation to their country of origin, that hardly matters.
It's not our fault that they are lazy or stupid or can't work the system or are bad at math or didn't catch a clerical error in year 5 of their detention or... fuckitall, we don't need reasons and they have no rights. Just make something up, it'll be fine. Nobody cares, anyway.
I am not an immigration lawyer and I've never done the naturalization thing myself. I know nothing about this stuff. But this morning during the authorized news-viewing window, I read that the Fifth Circuit decided it was OK to detain migrants indefinitely. That doesn't sound very American to me, honestly. Isn't there some kind of habeas thing about this? Habeas corpus?
Latin is hard, but habeas corpus is a legal precedent from like the middle ages or some shit: a procedure that allows any person detained on a charge “without sufficient cause” to challenge their detention in court. It's in the Constitution, too. Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2 of the US Constitution reads, “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
Well, then. SHALL NOT BE SUSPENDED. It's right there in black and white. Done and dusted. So what happened?
In the spring of 2025, White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said the presidential administration (was) looking into suspending habeas corpus to detain and deport people from the U.S. . (source) Because the only exceptions offered in the Constitution are Rebellion and Invasion, probably they were planning on aiming for one of those exceptions. To make it seem more palatable and legal-ish, y'know, while they still have to pretend the Constitution matters.
Now, I don't watch very much of Dear Leader's administration talking because I want to avoid throwing my laptop across the room, but folks with stronger stomachs have been following the rhetoric and telling us about it because the words people use to talk about stuff... matter.
When an administration continually refers to migrant and refugee populations as illegal immigrants, that changes the discussion right off the bat. Illegal's right there in the phrase, innit, OF COURSE they are guilty of a lock-uppable-crime. Or when an administration calls illegal immigrants liberal bullshit words like undocumented residents or migrant workers or political refugees, all of those sound way better than illegal immigrant, right? So Dear Leader's administration has been using the "invasion" phrasing to set the stage, to prime the pump, to signal very clearly what kind of court ruling they're looking to get.
So, the phrasing is out there and the administration's desires are clear. The next thing they have to do is to go out and shop the courts. There are a lot of jurisdictions and judges and courts in the United States and it's quite possible that an administration can find one, somewhere, eventually, that can read the HUGE NEON BLINKING TEA LEAVES and is weak-willed enough or greedy enough or whatever-enough to provide the desired ruling on the flimsiest of legal pretexts. It may take a while, but the eventuality is almost guaranteed ... a million monkeys, a million typewriters, and the dangling banana of the administration clearly provides outsize rewards those who further its goals, a banana (republic) policy clearly evident in the metoric rise of the great legal mind Pam Bondi to Attorney General of the United States and the selection of Fox & Friends talking head Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of Defense or War or whatever they're calling it today.
The administration has been court shopping their "invasion" theory for a while. There's a nice article that came out by Reuters over the weekend detailing this. It says that courts have ruled ICE detentions illegal more than 4,000 times. MORE THAN FOUR THOUSAND TIMES, the courts have said, Nah, fam, habeas corpus is a real thing and you can't just lock people up indefinitely and yet... and yet... the administration has kept on trying because they know that one day, they are going to find their monkey, the one willing to take the banana. And that monkey will say Sure, bro, there's an INVASION going on. We see the news. We hear your phrasing. We know what you're looking for and we're here to give it to you.
Turns out that the correct monkeys work for the Fifth Circuit Court in (of course) Texas. Here's an article about the ruling.
And now, you sweet summer child who doesn't know very much about anything and clings to the faint hope that perhaps the courts are strong enough to withstand this bullshit ruling... you pipe up in your Cindy-Lou Who voice: But... but... this will get appealed, right?
Not quite how you think, Cindy-Lou Who, but yes. The administration needs a second, contrary ruling from another circuit court... so that they have the Fifth Circuit Court saying "OK To Detain Migrants Indefinitely, The Invasion Thing Is Legit" and some other Circuit Court saying "I call Bullshit, The Invasion Thing Is COMPLETELY UNFOUNDED AND STUPID." This is called a Circuit Split and it kicks the whole matter to a higher court.
The higher court, the court that is higher than the Circuit Courts, is the Supreme Court. The nine justices will have to (eventually) issue a ruling on the legality of the matter of "Does the current administration's invasion theory hold water for the suspension of habeas corpus for migrant detainees?"
This may take some time to percolate through the system (the courts are not fast) but it will be at least a 5-4 split but more likely a 6-3 split, with dissenting justices of Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Justice Boof Kavanaugh may well write the ruling -- he did for the Kavanaugh Stop (He hates that thing being named for him and therefore I use the terminology at absolutely every opportunity because he wrote a ruling allowing people to be detained for not looking
Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett belong to Trump. They're his appointees. Roberts, Alito (probably going to retire here directly so that Trump or lackeys can appoint another young fascist judge to replace him), and Thomas are fairly reliable conservatives.
Maybe one will defect, but certainly not two. It's going to be 6-3 or 5-4, but the permanent detention of migrants is going to happen in the United States of America. Dear Leader wants "invasion" and Dear Leader wants "permanent detention in camps" and so that's what is going to happen with the Supreme Court.
It's cute that you think anything other than that is going to happen, Cindy-Lou.
Let's hear it for concentration camps. I can't wait to find out what sort of forced labor the detainees will be doing.
Also, Pam... What about them Epstein Files? What? We're done with those? I though you had like three million more to go. What about the other three million files, Pam? How come non-minor, non-victim names were redacted IN VIOLATION OF THE LAW, Pam? Don't you care about arresting pedophiles, Pam? Pam? WHAT ABOUT THE PEDOPHILES, PAM?
