Amicus | Sneak Preview: The Supreme Court Just Gave The Trump Administration Everything It Wanted—Almost

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4.6 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Here’s a question for you. If you are scooped up by ICE (masked, covering badge numbers), then moved from one detention center to another in quick succession, before being hastily forced onto a flight to El Salvador where you are imprisoned in a “terrorism confinement center” beyond the jurisdiction of the United States –– at what point in that process could you access some kind of adjudicatory review? In this bonus episode of Amicus for Slate Plus members, Dahlia Lithwick tackles the Supreme Court’s shadow docket decisions in two overlapping but distinct cases stemming from the Trump administration’s renditioning of detainees to an El Salvadorean mega-prison which also happens to be a legal black hole. Joined by Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern, they explore the legal and procedural concerns, the consequences for due process, and why five justices saw fit to reward the Trump administration for some very out-of-bounds behavior in the lower courts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Dahlia Lithwick.
0:11.3	This is Amicus, Leight's podcast about the courts, the law, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
0:16.0	We are releasing this extra episode of Amicus on Tuesday afternoon because the tsunami of cases
0:23.8	now hitting the Supreme Court on this question of the Alien Enemies Act and a black site
0:30.4	in El Salvador seems to be coming to a head at the High Court this week, culminating in another
0:36.5	unsigned per curiam order that came
0:39.4	down Monday evening in a case we've been monitoring since its inception on March 15th, when
0:45.8	the administration tossed several hundred Venezuelan migrants onto planes and sent them to the
0:51.6	Seacot mega prison in El Salvador under exceedingly dubious legal authority.
0:57.1	On Monday night, the Supreme Court by a five to four margin said,
1:00.9	Bigons, we're going to let the government go ahead keep doing what they're doing because those
1:06.1	renditioned prisoners, none of whom is an enemy alien in a declared war against the United States,
1:12.5	filed suit the wrong way in the wrong court.
1:15.4	Oh, well, mistakes were made.
1:17.3	Joining us to discuss what I think is a really big deal that is getting lost in.
1:24.3	Financial news is Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern, who stayed up really late Monday night writing about this.
1:31.3	Hi, Mark.
1:32.3	Hi, Dahlia.
1:33.2	So listen, there's two distinct cases that are getting a lot of attention.
1:38.0	They have overlapping issues, but they are two very different cases.
1:42.5	One is the case of Kilmar Abrago-Garcia.
1:46.2	We discussed that case with his lawyer on this weekend's show.
	...

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