Caitlin Dickerson

And then the memo is taken away.

No one has a physical copy of it.

So that doesn't really sound like a policy that the administration fully stands behind.

But what it will take to determine whether or not this new interpretation holds up to the law is a legal challenge.

You know, courts will have to decide.

It will no doubt be appealed, potentially all the way up to the Supreme Court, who could determine that it is legal.

The courts can...

absolutely slow the Trump administration down.

Federal courts have probably been the most impactful, if not the only force that's managed to try to contain whether it's the use of force or things like tanks in the streets, the deployment of the National Guard.

You know, we've seen the courts weigh in and limit what the Trump administration can do.

I think they're far more effective than local law enforcement, for example.

The mayor of Minneapolis has talked about how trying to challenge ICE through its own measures is challenging because, for one thing, we're in sort of untrodden legal territory, but also, as he put it, they have bigger guns than we do.

So you can see how other ways of trying to contain ICE's work could really end badly.

So the courts can and have played a significant role in controlling what the Trump administration is doing.

But where do the courts end?

They end at the Supreme Court.

And the Supreme Court obviously has a conservative majority that has thus far mostly favored what the administration is trying to do, whether that's related to immigration or not.

But until then, yes, federal courts...

and I think will continue to push back against some of these more blatant and really obvious violations of constitutional rights and of legal precedent.

So I wrote a story called Hundreds of Thousands of Anonymous Deportees because I realized that it was as if individual cases were becoming household names, individual people who'd been picked up by ICE and who were viewed as especially sympathetic, but who also had access to national media, had a spokesperson who was willing to come forward.