Lee Gelernt

speaker

55 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2025 last heard Apr 2025

Lee Gelernt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Rachel Maddow Show · Independent Agency CEO: 'DOGE has broken into our building.' · 18 Mar 2025 podcast

And these Venezuelan men who have been sent to El Salvador, as the video already suggests, are in real danger. But the second reason this is so big is what you also talked about, is beyond just the Alien Enemies Act, The Trump administration seems to be basically saying the federal courts should stay out of their business.

But of course, our entire country is premised on the idea that we have three equal branches of government and both Congress and the president will listen to the federal courts. We were very concerned that the administration just simply ignored and violated the court's order to turn their planes around. And so we told the judge we were concerned about it, given all the facts.

He said, let's get in here for a hearing. We left that hearing even more concerned than we were initially. I mean, the administration tried to first say, well, we didn't think you meant this and that, but obviously they clearly understood what the order meant. They're basically just saying, don't interfere with us. And they even went as far as going to the D.C.

Circuit a few hours before the hearing to try and get the judge thrown off the case. I mean, this is really extraordinary. And what I said in the hearing was,

I wanted to be very careful with my words, but I felt like, although a lot of people throw around the term constitutional crisis, we were moving in that direction if the administration is really not going to allow federal courts to do their job.

Yeah, so I think that's the right question. So the judge will have all the normal types of sanctions and contempt orders that he can issue. But truthfully, we are much more concerned with our clients who are now sitting in a Salvadoran prison. Generally speaking, a federal court cannot order another country to do something

We think this may be different because we actually think that El Salvador is almost like serving as a private prison with the U.S. footing the bill. And so we were going to, for sure, if he finds that they violated the order, we are for sure going to ask him to get these men back. Because there's no question the United States government has the leverage to do it.

And we're going to say they're still constructively in U.S. custody. But, you know, that will be our first concern. Whatever other sanctions or contempt orders we ask for, I think will be a secondary concern.

Oh, for sure. And what we have said is two things. One is that this wartime authority cannot be used because Congress has said very, very clearly it can only be used where the United States is in a declared war with a foreign nation, a foreign nation, or a foreign nation is invading us.

If the president can just simply say, well, every time we think there's a criminal group that's dangerous, no matter what nationality, we're going to just send them off. That's very dangerous. But the other part of this is that there's zero due process. So let's just assume for the moment that the Alien Enemies Act can be used against a non-state actor.

We're clear that it can't be, but even if it could, you have to give these individuals some due process to show that they're not part of the gang and then therefore don't fall within the proclamation. Our five named plaintiffs dispute that they're part of the gang. I think we're going to see people when their families are finally reached and they've seen

photos and videos of these men being taken to El Salvador. Come forward and we're going to see people show that they're not gang members. And, you know, we don't know for sure who is who because the government did this all in secret. But I would just caution people not to buy in immediately to the government's characterization of all these people. I mean, think about Guantanamo.

They said these are the worst of the worst we're sending to Guantanamo. It quickly, very quickly became clear that many of the people didn't even have a criminal conviction, much less a serious criminal conviction. And so I think we all need to take a beat on whether we think, you know, whether we buy into this characterization.

But they certainly shouldn't be entitled to a hearing to show they're not part of the gang.

Thanks, Rachel.

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