California’s top law enforcement official has weighed in on Monday‘s controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling on immigration enforcement.
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta condemned the decision, which clears the way for immigration agents to stop and question people they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally based solely on information such as their perceived race or place of employment.
Speaking at a news conference Monday in downtown L.A., Bonta said he agreed with claims the ACLU made in its lawsuit against the Trump administration. He called indiscriminate tactics used to make immigration arrests a violation of the 4th Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
Bonta said he thinks it is unconstitutional “for ICE agents, federal immigration officers, to use race, the inability to speak English, location or perceived occupation to … stop and detain, search, seize Californians.”
He also decried what he described as the Supreme Court’s increasing reliance on its emergency docket, which he said often obscures the justices’ decision-making.
“It’s disappointing,” he said. “And the emergency docket has been used more and more. You often don’t know who has voted and how. There’s no argument. There’s no written opinion.”
Bonta called Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s opinion “very disturbing.”
The Trump-appointed justice argued that because many people who do day labor in fields such as construction or farming, engagement in such work could be useful in helping immigrant agents determine which people to stop.
Bonta said the practice enables “the use of race to potentially discriminate,” saying “it is disturbing and it is troubling.”
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday for the Trump administration and agreed U.S. immigration agents may stop and detain anyone they suspect is in the U.S. illegally based on little more than working at a car wash, speaking Spanish or having brown skin.
In a 6-3 vote, the justices granted an emergency appeal and lifted a Los Angeles judge’s order that barred “roving patrols” from snatching people off Southern California streets based on how they look, what language they speak, what work they do or where they happen to be.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said federal law says “immigration officers ‘may briefly detain’ an individual ‘for questioning’ if they have ‘a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts, that the person being questioned … is an alien illegally in the United States’.”
“Immigration stops based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence have been an important component of U.S. immigration enforcement for decades, across several presidential administrations,” he said.
The three liberal justices dissented.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the decision “yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
“The Government … has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” Sotomayor wrote.
Sotomayor also disagreed with Kavanaugh’s assertions.
“Immigration agents are not conducting ‘brief stops for questioning,’ as the concurrence would like to believe. They are seizing people using firearms, physical violence, and warehouse detentions,” she wrote. “Nor are undocumented immigrants the only ones harmed by the Government’s conduct. United States citizens are also being seized, taken from their jobs, and prevented from working to support themselves and their families.”
The decision is a significant victory for President Trump, clearing the way for his oft-promised “largest Mass Deportation Operation” in American history.
Beginning in early June, Trump’s appointees targeted Los Angeles with aggressive street sweeps that ensnared longtime residents, legal immigrants and even U.S. citizens.
A coalition of civil rights groups and local attorneys challenged the cases of three immigrants and two U.S. citizens caught up in the chaotic arrests, claiming they’d been grabbed without reasonable suspicion — a violation of the 4th Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.
On July 11, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order barring stops based solely on race or ethnicity, language, location or employment, either alone or in combination.
The case remains in its early phases, with hearings set for a preliminary injunction this month. But the Department of Justice argued even a brief limit on mass arrests constituted a “irreparable injury” to the government.
A few days later, Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to set aside Frimpong’s order. They said agents should be allowed to act on the assumption that Spanish-speaking Latinos who work as day laborers, at car washes or in landscaping and agriculture are likely to lack legal status.
“Reasonable suspicion is a low bar — well below probable cause,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his appeal. Agents can consider “the totality of the circumstances” when making stops, he said, including that “illegal presence is widespread in the Central District [of California], where 1 in every 10 people is an illegal alien.”
Both sides said the region’s diverse demographics support their view of the law. In an application to join the suit, Los Angeles and 20 other Southern California municipalities argued that “half the population of the Central District” now meet the government’s criteria for reasonable suspicion.
Roughly 10 million Latinos live in the seven counties covered by the order, and almost as many speak a language other than English at home.
Sauer also questioned whether the plaintiffs who sued had standing because they were not likely to be arrested again.
That argument was the subject of sharp and extended questioning in the 9th Circuit, where a three-judge panel ultimately rejected it.
“Agents have conducted many stops in the Los Angeles area within a matter of weeks, not years, some repeatedly in the same location,” the panel wrote in its July 28 opinion denying the stay.
One plaintiff was stopped twice in the span of 10 days, evidence of a “real and immediate threat,” that he or any of the others could be stopped again, the 9th Circuit said.
Days after that decision, heavily armed Border Patrol agents sprang from the back of a Penske moving truck, snatching workers from the parking lot of a Westlake Home Depot in apparent defiance of the courts.
Immigrants rights advocates had urged the justices not to intervene.
“The raids have followed an unconstitutional pattern that officials have vowed to continue,” they said. Ruling for Trump would authorize “an extraordinarily expansive dragnet, placing millions of law-abiding people at imminent risk of detention by federal agents.”
The judge’s order had applied in an area that included Los Angeles and Orange counties as well as Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
Savage reported from Washington, Sharp from Los Angeles.
BOSTON — A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration’s move to freeze $2.2 billion in research funding for Harvard University was unconstitutional.
The ruling issued Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs in Boston said the funding freeze amounted to “retaliation, unconstitutional conditions, and unconstitutional coercion” against the Ivy League school for refusing to yield to the White House’s “ideologically motivated” policy demands.
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BOSTON — A federal judge has upheld the state’s ban on the sale of certain types of handguns following a legal challenge by gun rights groups that vow to repeal the ruling.
In a decision issued Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper rejected claims in a lawsuit filed by the owners of Gunrunners LLC and the Delaware-based Firearms Policy Coalition alleging that the restrictions violate the Second Amendment and are “inconsistent” with the nation’s history of firearm regulation.
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SALEM, Mass. — An off-duty North Andover police officer who was shot in her home by a colleague serving a restraining order will be released to the custody of her mother and stepfather under GPS-monitored home confinement as she awaits trial.
Kelsey Fitzsimmons, 28, of North Andover pleaded not guilty Thursday following her arraignment on a charge of assault by means of a dangerous weapon in Essex County Superior Court.
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SALEM, Mass. — An off-duty North Andover police officer who was shot in her home by a colleague serving a restraining order will be released to the custody of her mother and stepfather under GPS-monitored home confinement as she awaits trial.
Kelsey Fitzsimmons, 28, of North Andover pleaded not guilty Thursday following her arraignment on a charge of assault by means of a dangerous weapon in Essex County Superior Court.
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BOSTON — A “breakdown” in communication between two state agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the release of information about allegations of child abuse and neglect by licensed educators and others, putting students at risk, according to a new state audit.
The review by state Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s office, released last Tuesday, faulted the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for a “failure” to ensure it received up-to-date information from the Department of Children and Families on whether alleged child abuse or neglect against licensed educators warranted investigation or disciplinary actions.
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As an erstwhile drummer, I was drawn to the movie Whiplash, in which an abusive music instructor played by J.K. Simmons pushes his promising drum student nearly over the brink in his pursuit of perfection. At one point Simmons tells him, “There are no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job.’”
You may take issue with that harsh approach to behavior motivation, but when it comes to criminal justice, the two most dangerous words are undoubtedly “early release.” The fear that someone released “early” from custody will commit a violent crime is one of the biggest drivers of the restrictive policies that fueled the historic rise in American imprisonment starting in the 1970s.
A basketball hangs in razor wire in the maximum security yard of the Lansing Correctional Facility on April 18, 2023, in Lansing, Kansas. A basketball hangs in razor wire in the maximum security yard of the Lansing Correctional Facility on April 18, 2023, in Lansing, Kansas. John Moore/Getty Images
But recent actions at the most senior levels of the federal justice system could go a long way toward easing that phobia by acknowledging that giving people incentives to earn their way out before the very last day of their prison sentence is an important tool for public safety.
In a June interview with Forbes, the Trump administration’s newly appointed director of the federal Bureau of Prisons, William Marshall, made clear his agency’s mission is “safely incarcerating those who are dangerous and returning others to society sooner.” He also issued a policy directive that will help many incarcerated people leave prison and rejoin their families more quickly.
“Early release” is used casually and nearly universally—by journalists and by reform advocates and opponents alike—to describe anyone who gets out of prison at anything shy of 100 percent of the maximum possible sentence. Google “early release” and click the News tab to see just how common this is.
Its potency reflects the legacy of Willie Horton, the convicted murderer who was released from a Massachusetts prison on a weekend furlough and committed a rape. This was in 1988, and Horton’s case, used against the Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in that year’s election, became an incinerator for policies characterized as “soft on crime.”
Yet the phrase “early release” is fundamentally inaccurate and misleading. As anyone involved in the criminal justice process will tell you—victims and survivors included—all states and the federal government have laws and policies that not only permit people to earn release prior to the expiration of their sentence, they encourage it.
In fact, that’s the central thrust of the First Step Act, which Congress passed with bipartisan support and President Donald Trump signed during his first term. That landmark legislation allows people in federal prison who are considered low risk, and who complete rehabilitative programs, to earn time credits that can trim their sentence or allow them to serve the final portion in home confinement or residential reentry centers.
The point is that it matters far more to public safety that people succeed after release than whether they get out in June or July. Analysis of recidivism under the First Step Act by the Council on Criminal Justice offers evidence that it’s working. People released under the act have come back to prison 55 percent less than similarly situated people released before it took effect. The concept of earned release enjoys broad public support as well, winning large majorities in both older and more recent polls.
The state and federal system each have their own complex set of rules that determine the minimum and maximum boundaries of prison terms, and they vary tremendously. In Arkansas, people may serve as little as 17 percent of their possible maximum sentence, while in Arizona, they must serve 85 percent of the maximum before release. But whether that “release window” is large or small, judges and lawyers—and reporters—understand that the various release mechanisms mean defendants are highly unlikely to serve every day of their maximum sentence behind bars.
As such, there’s nothing “early” about the release of people who have completed certain programs, avoided disciplinary infractions, and/or convinced a parole board that they are ready to return home. Nor is there anything untoward and deceptive about it. It’s the law, and everyone knows it, including the new head of the federal prison system.
While the policy and linguistic effects of Marshall’s declarations are yet to be seen, the demise of the “early release” boogeyman can’t come soon enough. The phrase strongly implies that the system has failed to deliver what it promised. It said it was going to do one thing, but then it turned around and did another. It cheated. It endangered the public. “Early release” breeds mistrust and cynicism. It does immense damage to the credibility of the justice system, and to the government in general.
People have tried through the years to come up with an alternative. “Accelerated” and “expedited” release are among them. “Earned” release is gaining popularity but so far, nothing’s really stuck outside the community of reformers.
Finding a phrase that does stick isn’t a matter of political messaging or spin. It’s about acknowledging that when someone goes home before they max out their prison sentence, the system isn’t pulling one over on the public. It’s not whiplash. It’s functioning exactly as designed.
Adam Gelb is the president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank and invitational membership organization that advances understanding of the criminal justice policy choices facing the nation and builds consensus for solutions that enhance safety and justice for all.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
BOSTON — Embattled Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins will step down from his post while he defends himself against federal extortion charges.
In a joint statement, Gov. Maura Healey and Attorney General Andrea Campbell said Tompkins has “agreed to step away from his position until the federal case against him is resolved” and tapped Special Sheriff Mark Lawhorne to temporarily fill the post.
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A director of national intelligence who’s shown no great abundance of that quality but, rather, an eagerness to twist and bend facts like a coat hanger, serving whatever cockamamie claim the president burps up.
Because, after all, obeisance and lay-down-your-life loyalty are the main prerequisites for service in the Trump administration, along with the all-important consideration of how one comes across on television.
How else to explain the chief federal prosecutor he’s imposed on Nevada, Sigal Chattah?
Chattah, 50, devoted years to a not-particularly-noteworthy legal career, practicing domestic and international law at her Las Vegas firm and teaching political science for a time at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In 2022, Chattah was the Republican nominee for state attorney general, losing rather handily to incumbent Democrat Aaron Ford.
But not before distinguishing herself as a notably reprehensible candidate.
Among other things, Chattah compared Ford to the leader of Hamas and said that her opponent, who happens to be Black, “should be hanging from a f— crane.” (The Israeli-born Chattah told the Las Vegas Review Journal the “smart-ass comment” was a tongue-in-cheek expression derived from her Middle East background.)
A pugnacious poster on social media — another perceived asset in Trump World — Chattah called a Black member of Congress a “hood rat,” a Black female prosecutor “ghetto” and a Black “Saturday Night Live” cast member a “monkey.”
She suggested immigrants — make that “invaders” — and college protesters should be shot and transgenderism should be treated with “meds or commitment to an in-patient facility.”
It’s hardly unusual for a president to pick a member of his party to serve as U.S. attorney, replacing the choice of a previous administration. In fact, even though justice is supposed to be blind and thus, theoretically above political considerations, that’s how the selection process usually works.
But Trump has broken new and treacherous ground by installing not just partisans as federal prosecutors but lackeys — starting with Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi — who’ve shown their allegiance not to fair-minded application of the law but rather delivering on the feral impulses of their White House patron.
Bondi appointed Essayli on an interim basis in early April. His appointment was limited to 120 days; normally within that time he would have been formally nominated and faced confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Knowing the latter was unlikely, the Trump administration executed an end run and named Essayli “acting U.S. attorney,” which gives him an additional 210 days in the job before he faces formal confirmation.
As it happened, the very same day that maneuvering took place, prosecutors moved to dismiss charges in a criminal case involving one of Trump’s political donors.
Coincidence?
The same sleight-of-hand — interim appointment, designation as “acting U.S. attorney” — was used to extend the tenure of Trump sycophants as chief federal prosecutors in New Jersey, New Mexico, upstate New York and, in Chattah’s case, Nevada.
(In a setback for Trump, a federal judge ruled last week that his former personal attorney, Alina Habba, was unlawfully serving as New Jersey’s top prosecutor, though the order was put on hold pending appeal.)
Chattah’s partisanship is plain as a desert squall. In a remarkable breach of protocol and ethics — not to mention the federal law forbidding employees from mixing work and politics — she kept her position as Nevada’s representative on the Republican National Committee even as she served as interim U.S. attorney.
Last month, in the final days before Chattah’s interim appointment ended, more than 100 retired state and federal judges wrote Nevada’s chief federal district judge to object to her continued service. The group said Chattah’s history of “racially charged, violence-tinged, and inflammatory public statements” was disqualifying.
The Trump administration extended her tenure nonetheless.
As part of their unavailing effort, the judges quoted a 1940 speech then-U.S. Atty. Gen. Robert H. Jackson delivered, citing the immense power and responsibility that rests with a U.S. attorney.
“The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous,” said Jackson, who went on to serve as one of the Supreme Court’s most distinguished justices. “… The prosecutor can order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret session, and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial.
“While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.”
Obviously, Jackson never knew Chattah or other Trump appointees besmirching the halls of justice. But the late justice, buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in Frewsburg, N.Y., is doubtless turning somersaults in his grave.
METHUEN — School officials defended the separation of school and city legal services Monday night in opposition to efforts by some to consolidate resources.
The City Council has been discussing a tabled measure that would affirm City Solicitor Paul O’Neill is in charge of all legal services for Methuen, including its schools.
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Immigration officials said they intend to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda, after he declined an offer to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to human smuggling charges, according to a Saturday court filing.The Costa Rica offer came late Thursday, after it was clear that the Salvadoran national would likely be released from a Tennessee jail the following day. Abrego Garcia declined to extend his stay in jail and was released on Friday to await trial in Maryland with his family. Later that day, the Department of Homeland Security notified his attorneys that he would be deported to Uganda and should report to immigration authorities on Monday.His attorneys declined to comment on whether the plea offer had been formally rescinded. The brief they filed only said that Abrego Garcia had declined one part of the offer — to remain in jail — and that his attorneys would “communicate the government’s proposal to Mr. Abrego.”Abrego Garcia’s case became a flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda after he was mistakenly deported in March. Facing a court order, the Trump administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, only to detain him on human smuggling charges.He has pleaded not guilty and has asked the judge to dismiss the case, claiming that it is an attempt to punish him for challenging his deportation to El Salvador. The Saturday filing came as a supplement to that motion to dismiss, stating that the threat to deport him to Uganda is more proof that the prosecution is vindictive.“The government immediately responded to Mr. Abrego’s release with outrage,” the filing reads. “Despite having requested and received assurances from the government of Costa Rica that Mr. Abrego would be accepted there, within minutes of his release from pretrial custody, an ICE representative informed Mr. Abrego’s counsel that the government intended to deport Mr. Abrego to Uganda and ordered him to report to ICE’s Baltimore Field Office Monday morning.”Although Abrego Garcia was deemed eligible for pretrial release, he had remained in jail at the request of his attorneys, who feared the Republican administration could try to immediately deport him again if he were freed. Those fears were somewhat allayed by a recent ruling in a separate case in Maryland, which requires immigration officials to allow Abrego Garcia time to mount a defense.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. —
Immigration officials said they intend to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda, after he declined an offer to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for remaining in jail and pleading guilty to human smuggling charges, according to a Saturday court filing.
The Costa Rica offer came late Thursday, after it was clear that the Salvadoran national would likely be released from a Tennessee jail the following day. Abrego Garcia declined to extend his stay in jail and was released on Friday to await trial in Maryland with his family. Later that day, the Department of Homeland Security notified his attorneys that he would be deported to Uganda and should report to immigration authorities on Monday.
His attorneys declined to comment on whether the plea offer had been formally rescinded. The brief they filed only said that Abrego Garcia had declined one part of the offer — to remain in jail — and that his attorneys would “communicate the government’s proposal to Mr. Abrego.”
Abrego Garcia’s case became a flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda after he was mistakenly deported in March. Facing a court order, the Trump administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, only to detain him on human smuggling charges.
He has pleaded not guilty and has asked the judge to dismiss the case, claiming that it is an attempt to punish him for challenging his deportation to El Salvador. The Saturday filing came as a supplement to that motion to dismiss, stating that the threat to deport him to Uganda is more proof that the prosecution is vindictive.
“The government immediately responded to Mr. Abrego’s release with outrage,” the filing reads. “Despite having requested and received assurances from the government of Costa Rica that Mr. Abrego would be accepted there, within minutes of his release from pretrial custody, an ICE representative informed Mr. Abrego’s counsel that the government intended to deport Mr. Abrego to Uganda and ordered him to report to ICE’s Baltimore Field Office Monday morning.”
Although Abrego Garcia was deemed eligible for pretrial release, he had remained in jail at the request of his attorneys, who feared the Republican administration could try to immediately deport him again if he were freed. Those fears were somewhat allayed by a recent ruling in a separate case in Maryland, which requires immigration officials to allow Abrego Garcia time to mount a defense.
WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court said Thursday the Trump administration may cancel hundreds of health research grants that involve diversity, equity and inclusion or gender identity.
The justices granted an emergency appeal from President Trump’s lawyers and set aside a Boston’s judge order that blocked the canceling of $783 million in research grants.
The justices split 5-4. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court’s three liberals in dissent and said the district judge had not overstepped his authority.
The court’s conservative majority has repeatedly sided with the administration and against federal judges in disputes over spending and staffing at federal agencies.
In the latest case, the majority agreed that Trump and his appointees may decide on how to spend health research funds allocated by Congress.
Upon taking office in January, Trump issued an executive order “ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.”
A few weeks later, the acting director of the National Institutes of Health said the agency would no longer fund “low-value and off-mission research programs, including but not limited to studies based on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and gender identity.”
More than 1,700 grants were canceled.
Trump’s lawyers told the court the NIH had terminated grants to study “Buddhism and HIV stigma in Thailand”; “intersectional, multilevel and multidimensional structural racism for English- and Spanish-speaking populations”; and “anti-racist healing in nature to protect telomeres of transitional age BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] for health equity.”
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and his counterparts from 15 Democrat-led states had sued to halt what they called an “unprecedented disruption to ongoing research.” They were joined by groups of researchers and public health advocates.
The state attorneys said their public universities were using grant money for “projects investigating heart disease, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, alcohol and substance abuse, mental-health issues, and countless other health conditions.”
They said the NIH had terminated a grant for a University of California study examining how inflammation, insulin resistance and physical activity affect Alzheimer’s disease in Black women, a group with higher rates and a more aggressive profile of the disease.
Also terminated, they said, was a University of Hawaii study that aimed to identify genetic and biological risk factors for colorectal cancer among Native Hawaiians, a population with increased incidence and mortality rates of that disease.
In June, the Democratic state attorneys won a ruling from U.S. District Judge William G. Young, a Reagan appointee. He said the sudden halt to research grants violated a federal procedural law because it was “arbitrary” and poorly explained.
He said Trump had required agencies “to focus on eradicating anything that it labels as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (“DEI”), an undefined enemy.” He said he had tried and failed to get a clear definition of DEI and what it entailed.
When the 1st Circuit Court refused to lift the judge’s order, Trump’s Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer appealed to the Supreme Court in late July.
The solicitor general argued that Trump’s order rescinded an executive order from President Biden in 2021 that mandated “an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda” and instructed federal agencies to “allocate resources to address the historic failure to invest sufficiently, justly, and equally in underserved communities.”
He said the new administration decided these DEI-related grants “do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness.”
BOSTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers are hoping to close a “loophole” in state law that allows people who impersonate ICE agents and other federal authorities to shake down immigrants or sexually assault women to go without punishment.
The proposal, filed by state Sen. Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, Rep. Anne Margaret Ferranate, D-Gloucester, and others would make it a crime to impersonate a federal law enforcement official. Under current law, criminal charges can only be filed against someone accused of impersonating a state or local law-enforcement official.
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Minutes after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth trumpeted plans to “flood” Washington with National Guard members, a senior U.S. military official took the stand in federal court in California to defend the controversial deployment of troops to Los Angeles.
The move during protests this summer has since become the model for President Trump’s increasing use of the military to police American streets.
But the trial, which opened Monday in San Francisco, turns on the argument by California that troops called up by Trump have been illegally engaged in civilian law enforcement.
“The military in Southern California are so tied in with ICE and other law enforcement agencies that they are practically indistinguishable,” California Deputy Atty. Gen. Meghan Strong told the court Tuesday.
“Los Angeles is just the beginning,” the deputy attorney general said. “President Trump has hinted at sending troops even farther, naming Baltimore and even Oakland here in the Bay Area as his next potential targets.”
Senior U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer said in court that Hegseth’s statements Monday could tip the scales in favor of the state, which must show the law is likely to be violated again so long as troops remain.
But the White House hasn’t let the pending case stall its agenda. Nor have Trump officials been fazed by a judge’s order restricting so-called roving patrols used by federal agents to indiscriminately sweep up suspected immigrants.
After Border Patrol agents last week sprang from a Penske moving truck and snatched up workers at a Westlake Home Depot — appearing to openly defy the court’s order — some attorneys warned the rule of law is crumbling in plain sight.
“It is just breathtaking,” said Mark Rosenbaum of Public Counsel, part of the coalition challenging the use of racial profiling by immigration enforcement. “Somewhere there are founding fathers who are turning over in their graves.”
The chaotic immigration arrests that swept through Los Angeles this summer had all but ceased after the original July 11 order, which bars agents from snatching people off the streets without first establishing reasonable suspicion that they are in the U.S. illegally.
An Aug. 1 ruling in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals seemed to assure they could not resume again for weeks, if ever.
For the Department of Justice, the 9th Circuit loss was the latest blow in a protracted judicial beatdown, as many of the administration’s most aggressive moves have been held back by federal judges and tied up in appellate courts.
Trump “is losing consistently in the lower courts, almost nine times out of 10,” said Eric J. Segall, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law.
In the last two weeks alone, the 9th Circuit also found Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship unconstitutional and signaled it would probably rule in favor of a group of University of California researchers hoping to claw back funding from Trump’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Elsewhere in the U.S., the D.C. Circuit Court appeared poised to block Trump’s tariffs, while a federal judge in Miami temporarily stopped construction at the migrant detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has noted that his Department of Justice had sued the administration nearly 40 times.
But even the breakneck pace of current litigation is glacial compared with the actions of immigration agents and federalized troops.
Federal officials have publicly relished big-footing California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who have repeatedly warned the city is being used as a “petri dish” for executive force.
On Monday, the White House seemed to vindicate them by sending the National Guard to Washington.
Speaking for more than half an hour, Trump rattled off a list of American cities he characterized as under siege.
Asked whether he would deploy troops to those cities as well, the president said, “We’re just gonna see what happens.”
“We’re going to look at New York. And if we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago,” he said. “Hopefully, L.A. is watching.”
This image taken from video shows U.S. Border Patrol agents jumping out of a Penske box truck during an immigration raid at a Home Depot in Los Angeles on Aug. 6, 2025.
(Matt Finn / Fox News via Associated Press)
The U.S. Department of Justice argues that the same power that allows the president to federalize troops and deploy them on American streets also creates a “Constitutional exception” to the Posse Comitatus Act, a 19th century law that bars troops from civilian police action.
California lawyers say no such exception exists.
“I’m looking at this case and trying to figure out, is there any limitation to the use of federal forces?” Judge Breyer said.
Even if they keep taking losses, Trump administration officials “don’t have much to lose” by picking fights, said Ilya Somin, law professor at George Mason University and a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute.
“The base likes it,” Somin said of the Trump’s most controversial moves. “If they lose, they can consider whether they defy the court.”
Other experts agreed.
“The bigger question is whether the courts can actually do anything to enforce the orders that they’re making,” said David J. Bier, an immigration expert at the Cato Institute. “There’s no indication to me that [Department of Homeland Security agents] are changing their behavior.”
Some scholars speculated the losses in lower courts might actually be a strategic sacrifice in the war to extend presidential power in the Supreme Court.
“It’s not a strategy whose primary ambition is to win,” said professor Mark Graber of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. “They are losing cases right and left in the district court, but consistently having district court orders stayed in the Supreme Court.”
Win or lose in the lower courts, the political allure of targeting California is potent, argued Segall, the law professor who studies the Supreme Court.
“There is an emotional hostility to California that people on the West Coast don’t understand,” Segall said. “California … is deemed a separate country almost.”
A favorable ruling in the Supreme Court could pave the way for deployments across the country, he and others warned.
“We don’t want the military on America’s streets, period, full stop,” Segall said. “I don’t think martial law is off the table.”
Pedro Vásquez Perdomo, a day laborer who is one of the plaintiffs in the Southern California case challenging racial profiling by immigration enforcement, has said the case is bigger than him.
He took to the podium outside the American Civil Liberties Union’s downtown offices Aug. 4, his voice trembling as he spoke about the temporary restraining order — upheld days earlier by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — that stood between his fellow Angelenos and unchecked federal authority.
“I don’t want silence to be my story,” he said. “I want justice for me and for every other person whose humanity has been denied.”
A Salem woman who was arrested in 2023 for allegedly taking part in a ring selling stolen human remains claims her case should be dismissed because body parts are not legally considered “goods” — an argument a judge turned down this week.
Katrina Maclean, 46, owner of the Peabody-based “Kat’s Kreepy Kreations” and curator of Freaksantiquesuniques, argued in a brief filed in April that human remains are not considered property under the law.
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BEVERLY — Essex County’s “dirty deeds” containing discriminatory covenants are finally being cleaned up.
The Southern Essex Registry of Deeds recorded its first round of affidavits Monday to remove discriminatory covenants from real estate deeds in this area of the county. These covenants restricted people of certain ethnic or racial groups, particularly Black people, from buying homes or moving into specific neighborhoods years ago.
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SALEM — A New York man pled guilty to charges of rape, open and gross lewdness, and distributing obscene matter to a minor on Monday in Superior Court in Salem, according to the Office of Essex County District Attorney Paul F. Tucker.
Anthony Bowden, 34, of Albany, New York, was sentenced to four years in state prison to be followed by three years probation, during which time he must stay away and have no contact with the victim, have no unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 16, undergo a sex offender evaluation, and register with the sex offender registry board (SORB). Bowden was represented by attorney Christina Rose Kenney.
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MARBLEHEAD — Voters overturned a plan to put the town in compliance with the state’s controversial MBTA Communities Act this week.
During a special election Tuesday, 3,542 Marbleheaders voted not to adopt an overlay zoning district that would allow multifamily housing by right as required by the law, also known as 3A, for all communities receiving MBTA service or abutting those that do.
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