'This Should Be Shocking:' Read a Federal Appeals Panel's Sharp Rebuke of the Trump Administration
‘This Should Be Shocking:’ Read a Federal Appeals Panel’s Sharp Rebuke of the Trump Administration
By Adam Liptak and Alan Feuer April 17, 2025
A federal appeals court in Virginia issued a striking opinion on Thursday, reaffirming that the Trump administration had to take a more active approach in seeking the release of a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador last month despite a court order expressly forbidding him from being sent there.
But the opinion, authored by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a conservative jurist appointed by President Ronald Reagan, contained far more than simple legal instructions to the White House. The brief order also rebuked Trump officials for their apparent disregard of the bedrock principles of due process and for allowing a man whom they have acknowledged they wrongfully deported to continue to languish in a foreign prison.
At the same time, Judge Wilkinson, in an almost elegiac tone, gave an emphatic reminder that American democracy rests in part on mutual respect between the executive and judicial branches and lamented recent attacks by President Trump and his allies on the federal courts.
The New York Times annotated the court’s opinion.
Download the original PDF.
{snip several pages}
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I’ve been reading these decisions and some of them are hilarious. I read Boasberg’s last night. He did a nice job of cutting dump off at the knees.
I’ve read the first two pages of this one and nearly laughed myself silly. If you read this one, please note that it’s Pamela Jo Bondi. Poor thing, stuck with a hick name like that. 
Sharp rebuke is putting it mildly. In parts, every word is a razor blade.
In another section, he gets a nice little lecture on respect.
They point out to him that by not observing court decisions, it is a losing game for both. They point out in the end, they will win.
It’s not likely that an idiot like Trump is going to read this decision, nor is it going to be conveyed to him by Pamela Jo.
Too bad, because it makes very salient points.