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rule of law
The Fate of Detained Workers Depends on Us
Only by making it politically and socially unacceptable—and ultimately illegal—to hunt for undocumented people and treat them inhumanely, can we really change this situation.
Jul 13, 2025
For everyone who cares about Migrant Justice leaders Ignacio “Nacho” de la Cruz and his 18-year-old stepdaughter Heidi Perez, it’s great news that the immigration court has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to release them—at least for now.
Well more than 100 people protested outside Burlington, Vermont’s Federal District Court for a rally with moving speakers both Monday and Tuesday—and just as many had shown up at the Statehouse a few weeks before to demand their release. The courtroom itself was also packed for a habeas corpus hearing for Heidi, which is probably irrelevant given her upcoming release. But she and her stepfather are still vulnerable to deportation.
Why were the two detained at all? Coverage in Vermont Digger presents an unnerving picture of a “fishing expedition.” Perez and de la Cruz describe in “declarations” injuries which occurred when the driver’s window was broken by a Border Patrol supervisor, as well as physical maltreatment and a threat to their children once they were in custody. At the time, they say the agent refused to answer why he had stopped them apart from the fact that the driver spoke Spanish. The report of his affidavit in Digger reported that he expected to see more people in the back of the van (which he did not). He said that the driver and Perez refused to roll the window down fully, produce a driver’s license, or respond to his questions. From their point of view, they were within their rights to call the Migrant Justice hotline, and asked repeatedly why they were stopped and whether they were free to go. Since the detention, the government has also alleged that de la Cruz may have been involved in smuggling people based on the phone they seized from him. The alleged incident involves six people (reported here.) No charges have yet been filed against him.
Situations like this are going to arise more and more often everywhere in the country, and on our doorstep in Vermont. Under new legislation which eviscerates low-income healthcare access, ICE will gobble up more than the combined budgets of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the U.S. Marshals Service; and the Bureau of Prisons.
If there was ever a time to show up in public and financially for Vermont’s dairy workers and their organization, it’s now.
Even after hearing of the upcoming release, a progressive lawyer friend and I were left with a queasy feeling about the ultimate outcome after Monday’s hearing for Heidi—despite Heidi’s being a poster child for everything we would want for an immigrant in this country. She graduated from Milton High School just days before she was detained. Even as a junior, she was a leader and speaker with the Milk with Dignity campaign to improve conditions for Vermont’s migrant dairy workers. Perez was among those behind the Education Equity Act, which allows financial aid and in-state tuition regardless of a student’s immigration status. Her opinion piece in Vermont Digger, coauthored with Brissia Hernandez, said, “When we first moved to Vermont, there was basically no hope for students like us to go to college, even though we have been dreaming of it since we were little.” Perez has a scholarship to attend Vermont State University this fall. She thinks far beyond her own needs, and made our state a fairer, better place.
She’s done everything right—except that she is undocumented.
In the same Vermont Federal District courtroom, habeas corpus hearings were also held for Rümeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi and Kseniia Petrova. Each was in the country legally, and their legal status was capriciously revoked without due process. In contrast, Perez and de la Cruz are caught in a trap, a “cruel system” as several rally speakers described it. We depend on their labor but make it all but impossible for them to achieve legal status in the U.S. The government in power is pushing to expunge them from our country.
The power of the federal government is now behind every Border Patrol agent, the quotas are out there, and the agents are expected to fill them. We can’t really count on the administration’s mixed messages. Most of Vermont’s dairy workers and many of our construction and landscape workers are vulnerable to the same treatment that was meted out to Perez and de la Cruz. Recent raids have upset the whole dairy industry. No matter what someone’s rights may be in the technical sense, Border Patrol has carte blanche in most of Vermont. Only by making it politically and socially unacceptable—and ultimately illegal—to hunt for undocumented people and treat them inhumanely, can we really change this situation.
Even if these two prominent leaders were not targeted initially (and they may have been), a simple identity check would have revealed who they are. Conservative estimates say we have 800-900 dairy workers plus families in Vermont, and only a handful have been detained, fewer deported—and two of that handful are Migrant Justice leaders.
Will the legal system—whether the District Court or the immigration court—ultimately give relief to the undocumented workers who have been persecuted under every president, Democrat or Republican? Except when the government missteps or treats people badly, it’s hard to imagine real relief. Watching a 4-year-old girl in pigtails cavorting on the edge of the rally, I shuddered to think her undocumented parents might be deported. Among the speakers was Wuendy Bernardo, the primary caregiver for her own five children and two orphaned younger sisters. ICE requires her to report every month now, where hundreds have accompanied her on the last several visits. Her quiet dignity, her grave face, and the child clinging to her side told the whole story. She said “Here, we can feel the sun and the wind. In detention, you don’t feel that. You don’t even know if it is night or day.”
If the legal system offers only limited relief because it has now been tuned toward cruelty and persecution, our answers are in the streets, in the legislature, in the media—and beyond that in human kindness. People on dairy farms are afraid to go shopping. They are afraid to send their kids to school. Migrant Justice needs our presence and our help. As a worker-led organization, it has been a consistently positive force in winning legislative victories, with de la Cruz as an important figure in most. It builds solidarity, exposes abuses, and fights for better conditions.
If there was ever a time to show up in public and financially for Vermont’s dairy workers and their organization, it’s now. It's too dangerous for them to be on the streets themselves, and besides, most of them are working 12-hour shifts. It’s our turn.
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SCOTUS v. Democracy: 7 Supreme Court Decisions Brought Fascism to America
Trump v. CASA, Inc. was the coup de grace, capping six earlier and toxic SCOTUS decisions which, scattered over two centuries, collectively enabled this moment.
Jul 07, 2025
The Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision on June 27, 2025 created in President Donald Trump an American fascist dictator.
The decision in the case Trump v. CASA, Inc. did not seem momentous. It declared only that Federal District judges could no longer issue “universal” injunctions to foreclose nationwide harm; they could now grant relief only to a plaintiff in a specific lawsuit. But the decision was far from trivial: Trump v. CASA, Inc. was the coup de grace, capping six earlier and toxic SCOTUS decisions which, scattered over two centuries, collectively enabled fascism.
In deciding Trump v. CASA Inc., the six conservative justices of the Roberts Court agreed with the Republican Party’s inane claim: The injunctions of Federal District judges across the country were impeding President Trump’s ability to govern.
A president who can break laws at will is a dictator. The political system creating and accommodating this condition is fascism. Donald Trump is a dictator heading a fascist regime.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller: “Our objective, one way or another, is to make clear that the district courts of this country do not have the authority to direct the functions of the executive branch.”
Attorney-General Pam Bondi: “Active liberal… judges have used these injunctions to block virtually all of President Trump’s policies.”
The argument is laughingly specious, plausible but dead wrong in describing what is actually transpiring. It is no more than misleading spin, resting on two audacious assumptions: (1) The “functions of the executive branch” never violate the law, and “President Trump’s policies” certainly have not. (2) The “active liberal judges” who think otherwise are knee-jerk partisans with not a shred of professional integrity.
Injunctions in lawsuits are issued to block the defendant’s illegal action from continuing to harm the plaintiff, when the judge determines the lawsuit is warranted and the harm is serious. Federal District judges deal with issues nationwide in scope—their purview is every bit as wide as the Supreme Court’s—and if they believe the harm from the defendant’s action poses a threat to the nation at large, the injunction is applied “universally” across the country. We have followed this protocol since it was established by the Judiciary Act of 1789.
Federal District judges do not engage in blocking actions they know to be legal. The injunction in the case at hand and some 40 others against Trump were issued by judges who thought his actions were not, and were harmful nationwide.
Did they make judgment calls? Yes, Federal District judges don’t do anything else. Do they ever make bad ones? Certainly, but they err on the side of caution. If they’ve misjudged, and the enjoined action turns out to be legal, its interruption does no serious social harm. If they’ve judged correctly, and the action is in fact illegal, its interruption prevents serious social harm.
Here, then, is what Mr. Miller, Ms. Bondi, et al., are truly seeking: No Federal District judge should be empowered to protect the nation’s well-being from President Trump’s illegal actions.
And that’s what the Supreme Court’s decision has now codified.
Trump v. CASA is truly cataclysmic. After 236 years of upholding the rule of law, the Supreme Court has now offered Trump an off ramp. He can violate any law he pleases and not be enjoined from jeopardizing the American people.
A president who can break laws at will is a dictator. The political system creating and accommodating this condition is fascism. Donald Trump is a dictator heading a fascist regime.
Fascism is defined in scholarly literature as far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist governance, characterized by a dictatorial leader, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, frequently a fusion with corporate power, and often a cult of personality.
Here we are.
The Supreme Court’s first toxic decision occurred in 1803, in the case of Marbury v. Madison. With no constitutional authority to do so, Chief Justice John Marshall’s Court overturned a law passed by an elected Congress and signed by an elected president. How democratic was that? SCOTUS has exercised the power of judicial review ever since, throwing out both federal and state laws.
Corporate oligarchy was the intermediate step between government by the people and fascism.
The next devastating decision was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 83 years later. In this case the court upgraded the status of U.S. corporations from artificial persons created by state charters, to that of legal persons, with constitutionally protected rights of free speech, peaceful assembly, petition for redress of grievances, and freedom from unlawful search and seizure. Corporate personhood is prima facie preposterous—in fact its granting was technically illegal—but today it is “settled law.”
The misfortunes of judicial review and corporate personhood joined forces in two more SCOTUS decisions, in 1976 and 1978. Buckley v. Valeo found unconstitutional the Corrupt Practices Act of 1910, and declared spending money in political campaigns is an exercise of free speech. Two years later, in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a state law prohibiting corporations from spending money in political campaigns. The court concluded, citing Buckley, spending money in political campaigns is free speech and corporations have that right, protected by the Constitution.
But money doesn’t utter sounds or leave marks, and corporations don’t walk, eat, breathe, make love, or succumb to disease. Money is speech and corporations are people? How can that be? These two absurd concepts set the nation on the path to fascism.
Both Buckley and Bellotti, however, retained some minor restrictions on corporate spending: “Some conditions apply.” But spend the corporations could, and savagely they did. Over the rest of the 20th century, American corporations exercised their rights of free speech to dominate campaign finance, and their rights of petition to dominate congressional and executive branch lobbying. When the constant stream of corporate money became more influential in Washington than citizens’ episodic votes, democracy was displaced. Corporations succeeded in tilting the crafting of public policy to favor corporate interests over the American people’s well-being. (The nation’s physical infrastructure decayed, for example, while the defense corporations prospered.) Corporate oligarchy was the intermediate step between government by the people and fascism.
The minor restrictions on corporate spending were lifted by the next toxic decision, Citizens United v. FEC in 2010. The court declared corporate political spending could not be constitutionally constrained. “Some conditions [no longer] apply.”
The grip of corporate oligarchy tightened, expressed vividly in the first Trump administration’s slashing of corporate taxes. But at the end of those four years the transition to fascism appeared in dramatic fashion, when Trump refused to leave office, and his cult of personality stormed the Capitol.
Trump was subsequently indicted in two federal cases involving his presidency, for a total of 48 felonies. He denied everything and fought back, claiming his prosecution would handicap future presidents’ freedom of choice, especially in national security issues, if they feared prosecution when out of office. He took his case to SCOTUS.
The Roberts Court showed its propensity for accepting inane arguments. In Trump v. United States, July 1, 2024, the court declared immunity from prosecution for former presidents, if their violations of law were incidental to “official acts.”
No one is above the law, the Roberts Court proclaimed, except presidents.
Then a year later Trump v. CASA Inc. was the straw that broke democracy’s back.
SCOTUS v. DEMOCRACY brought us fascism and fashioned a dictator. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority continues as Trump’s compliant servant. Pam Bondi is his defense attorney. The sycophantic Republican Congress passed a law massively enriching the corporate and the wealthy at the direct expense of everyone else. No democracy on Earth would do that, ever.
And no country is a democracy if commanded by a single unaccountable man.
Trump can violate, has violated, is violating, will violate any law he chooses and face no universal injunctive interdiction. If he is sued for violating federal statutes and Pam Bondi fails with demonstrated vigor to dismiss the charges, his prosecution is postponed by Department of Justice policy until he is out of office. And once out of office Trump is immune.
But that may not happen. he may not leave office. If Trump can ignore the 14th Amendment in voiding birthright citizenship, he can ignore the 22nd and run for a third term. Or he might declare martial law and suspend elections altogether.
What will stop him? He’s 79. Maybe death. Anything else?
Angry, well informed, organized, and committed people are already protesting in the streets. That could stop him, but only if the movement grows larger.
Toppling Trump is by no means out of reach. Scholars Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan tell why in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. Based on their rigorous research into historic conflicts, they offer a “rule of thumb.” An autocratic regime is in mortal peril when 3.5% of the people register civil resistance.
Doing the math we need a bit more than 12 million Americans to do this, and we may be about halfway home. An estimated 4-7 million individuals have joined in thousands of protests multiple times since Trump was inaugurated.
So, people, we have to get that many more into the streets. Full stop.
This article is drawn from a book the author is completing, The Triumph of Corporate Oligarchy: How It Defeated Democracy, Savaged a Thriving Nation, Normalized Fraudulent War, and Brought Forth Donald Trump.
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The Supreme Court Just Granted Trump a License to Erase Moral Responsibility
By permitting the U.S. government to deport asylum-seekers and noncriminal undocumented immigrants to random third countries, the six Republicans on the bench handed a dangerous tool to a man most inclined to abuse it.
Jun 26, 2025
The American people just got a taste of authoritarianism wrapped in judicial robes. In a stunning 6-3 ruling this week, the Supreme Court green-lit the mass deportation of immigrants, not to their home countries but to third nations where they have no legal status, no family, and often no hope.
In her dissent, Justice Sonja Sotomayor, calling the shadow docket ruling “inexcusable,” pointed out how destructive this is to the rule of law (both U.S. and international law largely prohibit this) and to the lives of the people who may be deported without due process:
The Government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard. The episodes of noncompliance in this very case illustrate the risks.
The Due Process Clause represents “the principle that ours is a government of laws, not of men, and that we submit ourselves to rulers only if under rules.” By rewarding lawlessness, the court once again undermines that foundational principle.
In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution. In this case, the government took the opposite approach. It wrongfully deported one plaintiff to Guatemala, even though an Immigration judge found he was likely to face torture there. Then, in clear violation of a court order, it deported six more to South Sudan, a nation the State Department considers too unsafe for all but its most critical personnel.
This ruling by six corrupt Republican justices allows Donald Trump or any future president to designate any country they choose as a “safe third country” and deport people there without meaningful review, even if they’ve committed no crime and have a valid asylum claim.
If that sounds familiar, it should. It echoes one of the most cold-blooded decisions made by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime: to locate their extermination camps not within Germany, but in the foreign lands of occupied Poland.
Let’s be clear: Deportation is not genocide. But both decisions—then and now—are grounded in the same logic of moral evasion through geographic displacement.
When regimes want to commit acts that would stir conscience or provoke backlash at home, they find ways to outsource the cruelty.
The decision wasn’t just about deportation. It was about moral laundering, washing the blood off our hands by putting it on someone else’s tarmac.
The Nazi leadership understood that while Germany’s public had been bombarded with antisemitic propaganda for years, they still might balk at the wholesale slaughter of millions of people inside German borders. So they built Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec far away, deep in Poland, where there were no German newspapers, no prying eyes, and no courts to second-guess their machinery of death.
As Raul Hilberg and other Holocaust historians have documented, Nazi leaders like Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich made this decision deliberately to preserve the illusion of “moral cleanliness” at home while carrying out genocide abroad.
Today’s Trump version of this practice is more sanitized, but no less cynical.
By permitting the U.S. government to deport asylum-seekers and noncriminal undocumented immigrants to random third countries—often places they’ve never even set foot in—the Supreme Court has granted the executive branch a license to erase moral responsibility.
As long as the suffering happens somewhere else, we’re told, it’s not our fault. It’s not our soil. Not our responsibility.
That kind of logic is the death of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. As Federal Judge Patricia Millett said of Trump’s deportation of Venezuelan prisoners to a concentration camp in El Salvador, compared with FDR’s actions in WWII, “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act.”
A future president with dictatorial ambitions could cite this ruling to round up political dissidents, journalists, or whistleblowers and ship them off to “safe third countries” that are anything but.
The Trump administration argued—and the court’s on-the-take, Republican-appointed majority agreed—that migrants have no right to American judicial processes once they’re transferred elsewhere. In other words, we can dodge our legal obligations under both U.S. and international law simply by putting someone on a plane.
This is the same loophole thinking that allowed George W. Bush’s administration to kidnap terror suspects and ship them to places like Egypt and Syria, where they were tortured out of view. That policy was called “extraordinary rendition.” Today, we might call this new policy extraordinary rejection: a way to deny asylum without confronting its human cost.
And here’s the truly chilling part: Once someone has been deported to a third country, they are functionally outside the U.S. legal system. They can’t sue. They can’t appeal. They may not even survive. And, to Trump’s delight, it’ll all be outside the reach of American courts and U.S. media.
This obscene policy isn’t about safety, it’s about displacement as punishment and the creation of a pseudo-legal infrastructure of indifference to the humanity of the people we’re “processing.”
Whether it’s a camp outside Kraków or a deportation center in Guatemala, the strategy is the same: create a zone of moral invisibility. A legal no-man’s-land where acts that would outrage decent people become routine, because they happen far away, beyond the reach of media, law, and conscience.
That’s not how democracies behave: That’s how authoritarian regimes insulate themselves from dissent.
And like all authoritarian tools, once it exists, it will be used again.
You may think this only affects immigrants. But consider: The legal precedent now exists for the government to forcibly remove someone from U.S. soil and drop them in another country without due process. Today it’s asylum-seekers. Tomorrow, who knows?
A future president with dictatorial ambitions could cite this ruling to round up political dissidents, journalists, or whistleblowers and ship them off to “safe third countries” that are anything but.
You think that’s paranoid? So did people in 1932 Berlin.
The genius of the American system—at least in theory—is that it puts checks on state power. The executive cannot act like a king. The courts must protect the vulnerable. And the public must have visibility into the actions done in our name.
This week, though, the Supreme Court abdicated that role. And in doing so, the six Republicans on the bench handed a dangerous tool to a man most inclined to abuse it.
Let’s not kid ourselves. The decision wasn’t just about deportation. It was about moral laundering, washing the blood off our hands by putting it on someone else’s tarmac.
The Nazis did it. So did the Bush administration. Now Trump’s backers on the court have opened the door once more.
History doesn’t repeat, but, as Mark Twain said, it rhymes. And if we’re not careful, we may soon find that rhyme turning into a full verse we’ve heard before.
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