The Rachel Maddow Show
'Criminal contempt' looms over Trump's showdown with courts over deportation fiat
Thu, 17 Apr 2025
The judge hearing the case against Donald Trump's deportation flights is losing patience with the administration's excuses and stall tactics, and today raised the specter of holding members of the administration in contempt of court. Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, discusses with Rachel Maddow.
Chapter 1: What are mutual academic defense compacts among Big Ten universities?
Well, last night, the faculty senate at Michigan State voted that their school should join the other schools in the Big Ten in a totally non-sports-related agreement. The faculty at Michigan State voted last night that their school should join with all the other schools in the Big Ten in what they're calling a mutual defense compact, a mutual academic defense compact.
And what that means is kind of what it says. When Trump inevitably comes after one of the schools in the Big Ten, be it Michigan State or Rutgers or Ohio State or UCLA or USC or University of Washington or any of the other schools in that conference, the idea is that all the other schools would agree
to help that school defend itself and fight back, which would mean lawyers and experts and advocacy and lobbying and public relations, they would all do it together. They would treat Trump attacking any one of those schools as an attack on all of those schools. So no matter which one Trump picks first to go after, no school would have to fight alone.
Michigan State's faculty voted last night for their school to join and help create such a compact. And they are not the first. They are just the latest. They join Rutgers in New Jersey and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and Indiana University
excuse me, Indiana University at Bloomington, also outside the Big Ten, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, all those schools have taken the same or similar steps thus far. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education and our own reporting, we are expecting votes along these lines soon at the Ohio State University and the University of Michigan and the University of Washington.
We believe a vote like that is under discussion already at the University of Minnesota and at Penn State. We've also had faculty at Northwestern and the University of Oregon already pass similar but sort of more mild statements saying that they are generally in favor of this kind of idea. But, you know, a statement is just a statement. All that and a dollar will buy you a scratch ticket.
And frankly, time is short. But I'm telling you, this is a movement that is nevertheless picking up steam. Today, we've got grad student unions at a whole bunch of universities asking for their schools to join in a mutual academic defense compact like this as well. Grad students at the University of Minnesota, which I just mentioned, again, may have a faculty vote on this matter soon.
Also, grad students at Cornell University and Stanford University. University of Chicago, Northwestern, University of New Mexico, New Mexico State, North Carolina State, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Dartmouth, University of Iowa, grad students in all of those places speaking out, asking their universities to form a mutual defense compact with other schools. Tomorrow, this is one to watch for in Wisconsin.
In Madison, we're expecting a big rally at the University of Wisconsin at Madison to demand that that school join such a compact. as well. So this is something that is really picking up steam, but it ought to. Vice President J.D. Vance gave a keynote speech to a national conservatism conference a couple years ago, and the title of his speech was literally, The Universities Are the Enemy.
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Chapter 2: Why are universities considered targets by certain political figures?
Now, there are, of course, laws about tax-exempt status. The IRS can't legally take it away from a university or from any entity just because Trump pounds his chest and says so. So we'll be talking about that more on tonight's show. But the fact that Trump is trying it tells you, I mean, tells anybody paying attention that, yeah, now's the time. Move fast, right?
Any school that wants to survive what Trump and Vance are doing here, what their agenda is here for American universities and colleges, any school that wants to survive what's coming their way better find a way to not have to fight alone. And so, yes, now we are seeing all kinds of colleges all across the country move toward mutual defense pacts with other schools.
Basically little NATO treaties for all the colleges. An attack on one is an attack on all. I will tell you, I have no connection to any of these efforts, but I would just say as an observer, just speaking strategically, my only note on this might be, go faster. Once he's targeted you, it's too late to have a mutual defense treaty. in position.
You have to have these things in place ahead of time before he signs that executive order or yanks your funding or does whatever he's going to do to you. Time is short. River rises. So we're going to stay on this. We're going to keep you posted. While we are on this subject, though, may I also introduce you to the Federal Workers Legal Defense Network. This is brand new.
More than a thousand lawyers in 42 states have completed training now to defend federal workers from all aspects of what Trump is doing to them in the federal government, not just in lawsuits to challenge Trump's mass indiscriminate and in some cases illegal firings of huge swaths of people who work for the U.S. government, but also to
training on how to provide individual guidance and legal support to individual federal workers who have been fired or otherwise mistreated by the Trump administration. This was convened by civil rights groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and advocacy groups like Democracy Forward.
You keep hearing their name in the news because they've been suing the bejesus out of Trump in this second term. It was also pulled together by unions, including especially the AFL-CIO. They have all now come together to put together this very large thousand-plus lawyer effort in 42 states, this federal workers' legal defense network.
And they say their lawyers are trained, and it is now up and running. And again, I would just say, speed matters in an attempted authoritarian takeover that is trying to go as far as it can, as fast as it can, before the country can properly organize its defenses. Speed matters. That said, even if it hasn't been done already, still do it, right?
Even if the best time to have done something like this Federal Workers Legal Defense Network was probably yesterday or a month ago, the second best time to do it is right now. And so, yes, as of today, we've got one. And that means that federal workers are better off today than they were before.
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Chapter 3: What legal defense networks exist to support federal workers against the Trump administration?
And I will say, just in terms of the media, the sheer size of these events and the fact that most of them are in red states means that they're starting to get a ton of press and a ton of attention from the mainstream media. And that, of course, is starting to rattle everyone in politics on all sides, which is always fun to see.
But I'll tell you, you know, seeing those big events and seeing all the press they're now getting is fantastic to watch. But look around. Because when it's not an event with thousands of people, which obviously is going to get a lot of attention, what we're still seeing is thousands of events, thousands of protests, protests that are happening every day and in every state.
I mean, here's just a snapshot. Yesterday, protests to save Social Security from what Trump is doing to it at the Social Security field office here in Peekskill, New York. and at the Social Security office in La Crosse, Wisconsin. And in East Vancouver, Washington, people, again, protesting to protect Social Security.
In Baltimore, Maryland, people protesting against Trump letting his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, access everyone's personal data at the Social Security administration. This was outside the Social Security headquarters in Washington, D.C. yesterday. You see the sign there. Elon has your SSN. Elon has your Social Security number. Protests in Atlanta against Trump's mass firings at the CDC.
These protesters in Atlanta joined by Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and Democratic Congressman Hank Johnson. In Kansas City, Missouri, people turning out protesting against Trump's mass firings at the IRS. In San Francisco, protests against Trump turning the IRS into a weapon to be used against immigrants.
At Florida International University in Miami, protests against Trump's attacks on immigrants and on international students. No ICE on campus. At the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, a protest against students' visas being revoked. More protests against Trump's attacks on immigrants and international students at Emory University in Georgia.
In Burlington, Vermont, a protest outside the detention hearing for Rumesa Ozturk. She's the Tufts University doctoral student, the Fulbright scholar, who was snatched off the street and taken to a prison in Louisiana by masked Trump agents who didn't show their names and didn't show their faces. Put her in an unmarked car.
Yesterday, also in Louisiana, a protest outside that immigration prison, which is holding Ramesa Ozturk, and also holding Mahmoud Khalil from Columbia University, and frankly, thousands of other people whose names we do not know. People protested at the Tesla dealership in Chicago yesterday, including these kind of cute signs that are shaped like Cybertrucks.
I've never thought Cybertrucks were cute, but the signs shaped like Cybertrucks are cute. People protested at an announcement by the Indiana governor, Mike Braun, when he announced yesterday that he's going to try to do to health care in Indiana what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing to national health care for Trump. Oh, boy.
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Chapter 4: How are healthcare budget cuts under Trump affecting public response?
A very small group, including a sitting judge and a retired judge and a number of legal academics, legal professionals. asked people to convene online yesterday to show support for judges and their families and stand up in a nonpartisan way against threats to judges and their families.
Among the judges who participated in this was Judge Astor Salas, whose husband was grievously wounded and whose son was murdered in New Jersey. I first heard about this, I thought, one, this is a very unusual thing. You don't hear about the judiciary asking people to stand up for them very often.
And two, because the threats that judges and their families have received right now are so terrible, I thought, you know, even though this is a very unusual thing that they're asking people to do, I thought, you know what, I bet they are going to get a pretty good response to this. I bet they're going to get... you know, like 200 or 300 people to show up online in this Speak Up for Justice event.
I thought they'd get, you know, I thought they'd get a couple hundred people. I thought they might get like 500 people. They got more than 7,000 people joining that event in the middle of the day on a Tuesday.
So the ways people are standing up and saying no and standing up and saying they reject this and standing up and giving the administration the one-finger salute, put it in blunt terms, they are innumerable and unpredictable. And they surprise me every day that we cover this stuff. But today we saw something from a U.S. senator that we never thought any U.S. senator would ever have to do.
And so add this to the pantheon of things that people are doing to stand up to this administration and to try to stop some of the worst that they are trying to do.
As one federal judge started contempt proceedings against the Trump administration, and a second judge threatened them over the Trump administration refusing to comply with court orders, insisting that there's no law that can constrain Donald Trump from sending people from this country to a foreign prison indefinitely with no legal process at all. Today, a U.S.
senator, Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democratic senator from Maryland, he himself flew alone to El Salvador to try to get back one of his constituents, to try to get back a Maryland resident who Donald Trump sent to that foreign prison in El Salvador, even when the Trump administration admitted that trying to deport him in the way they did had been an administrative error.
Residents of Maryland have been protesting every day at the courthouse as a federal judge in Maryland has been ordering the Trump administration that they really do need to go get him and return him. Senator Van Hollen says he promised Kilmar Abrego-Garcia's wife and his mother that he would do everything in his power as a senator to get Mr. Abrego-Garcia back.
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Chapter 5: What do massive rallies by progressive leaders indicate about political resistance?
I hope to meet with some high-level government officials from El Salvador. As I've said before, the goal of my visit is to talk to people here about the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. I told his wife and his family I would do everything possible to bring him home, and we're going to keep working at this until we're successful.
I also hope to have the chance to meet with him, but we'll have a better idea if that works out a little later on.
Senator Van Hollen landing in El Salvador today, hoping for a chance to meet with Kilmer Abrego-Garcia in that prison. Senator Van Hollen says the vice president of El Salvador told him he would not be able to do that when he met with him today. Joining us now for the interview is Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who joins us from El Salvador.
Senator, thank you so much for what you're doing and for being here with us tonight. I know it's been a very long day.
It has, Rachel. But as you said in the intro, I promised Kilmar's family that I would do everything I could to bring him home because, as you said, a court in the United States has determined that he was illegally abducted from the United States and landed in the most notorious prison in El Salvador. So that's why I raised these issues directly with the vice president of El Salvador.
The president is not in the country now. So I met with the vice president to talk about these issues and ask for the opportunity to go visit Gilmour.
What are—what's sort of the range of potential outcomes here that you think are possible? What are you hoping to accomplish on this trip? And how did those expectations match up with the experience that you had today meeting with the country's vice president and hearing what you did from him?
Well, my goal is to keep a spotlight on this issue until justice is done, until the nine to nothing opinion by the Supreme Court is implemented by the Trump administration, which is ignoring entirely that order that they need to facilitate his return. I asked the folks at the embassy whether they'd been ordered by the administration to do anything to facilitate his return. The answer was no.
So they're clearly... not in compliance. And I said to the vice president of El Salvador, look, you've got somebody in your worst prison, the prison for terrorists, who the United States court has said has committed no crime. And so I asked him if he had any evidence that Kilmar was a member of MS-13 or had committed any crimes. And he said, no. No.
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Chapter 6: How are protests across the U.S. manifesting opposition to Trump policies?
I just I believe that will be the case because I believe people will keep pressing for justice.
Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, joining us live tonight from El Salvador. Sir, thank you again for making time to be here and helping us understand this and explain it to our audience. Please keep us surprised.
I know a lot of people are worried about you being there, given what's going on between our government and the government of El Salvador and the kind of language used by their president in talking about this standoff. So please be safe, keep us surprised, and we'll look forward to having you back on soon.
Will do. Thank you, Rachel.
All right, more news ahead here tonight. Stay with us. The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders, especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it.
To permit such officials to freely annul the judgments of the courts of the United States would not just destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, it would make a solemn mockery of the Constitution itself. Defendants provide no convincing reason to avoid the conclusion that appears obvious. They deliberately flouted this court's order.
Rather than offer a mea culpa, an attempt to explain this grave error and detail plans to rectify it, defendants offer various imaginative arguments for why they nevertheless technically complied with the order. None of their positions withstand scrutiny. Defendant's conduct, moreover, manifests a willful disregard of the court's legally binding prescriptions.
Given the evidence at this early stage in the inquiry and offered no persuasive reason to conclude otherwise, the court finds that there is probable cause that defendants acted contemptuously. When the judge says acted contemptuously, he means in a legal sense, as in the defendants acted in contempt of court.
If you want to know where contempt of court is on the map of the death of the Republic, it's that thing right on the edge of the abyss. You get up to the—you're approaching the cliff. There's the signs telling you you're getting close to the edge. And then you go past the signs, and then you get right up to the edge. It's contempt of court. It's right there.
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Chapter 7: What unusual support are judges receiving against threats to the judiciary?
Yeah, a few things. I mean, so first of all, your introduction, I think, hit it right where this is serious business and we're in a very serious place. And I think you're right about the way the judge wrote it. I think he's writing for more than just the lawyers, more than just law professors. He's trying to talk to the American public about what it would mean if court orders are violated.
And I think the other thing he said, which is really important is because I've been sitting there in court, obviously, for all these hearings is he has given the government time and time again, the opportunity to explain themselves. And they've simply refused. The most important thing from our standpoint is.
I'm gonna let other people get into whether we're at a constitutional crisis now or approaching it and what it means for the rule of law in a larger sense. The most important thing for me today was that the court said, look, they can still get out from under this if they do the right thing and bring these men back. And obviously everyone's focused
on Kilmer right now, and that's critically important that he be brought back. But in our case, there were hundreds of Venezuelan men who were wrongfully sent to this prison and are there now. And I think Judge Boasberg saying, look, as bad as this was, I don't need to go through with all this if you just do the right thing and bring these men back.
Unfortunately, the government has already appealed his order. His order came out this afternoon. They've already appealed it rather than saying, OK, we'll do the right thing and bring these men back.
And to be clearly, what the judge is signaling here is that the Trump administration does not need to set all of these people free or release them or do any other specific thing. The judge is simply saying that these men must be brought back into the custody of the United States.
that they must be under the control and custody of the United States so that the proceedings on any number of their cases can proceed along the lines that are afforded under the Constitution, right? He's not telling the administration that they need to do any one thing with any of these men other than put them back under U.S. control.
Yeah, I'm glad you said that, Rachel. That's absolutely right. The judge has gone out of his way to make clear that he is not ordering these men to be released on U.S. streets. If they've committed crimes, they could be prosecuted. They can be detained under immigration laws and they can be removed under immigration laws.
But they can't be sent to a foreign prison potentially for the rest of their lives without due process. What he is saying is bring them back to the U.S., give them due process, and if ultimately they're deported under the immigration laws, then they're deported under the immigration laws.
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Chapter 8: What actions has Senator Chris Van Hollen taken regarding Trump's deportation policies?
They may hem and haw, but it's just not going to happen. We're not going to be there. Deputy Director for the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, the lead lawyer in this case against the Trump administration. Lee, I know it's been a long and very intense day. Thanks for your help tonight.
Thanks, Rachel.
I'll be right back. All right, that's going to do it for me tonight. I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week at 9pm Eastern.