\n<\/p>\n
One of the<\/span> top job requirements for attorneys in Donald Trump\u2019s Justice Department seems to be an abundance of shamelessness.<\/p>\n A lot of legal professionals have to defend the indefensible as part of their jobs, but arguing that rampant lawlessness is legal \u2014 as government attorneys now do in many of the 240-plus lawsuits<\/a> filed against the current Trump administration \u2014 requires a particular flair for impudence.<\/p>\n The effort to deport Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil offers a case in point. The Trump regime abducted<\/a> Khalil, a green card holder, in the lobby of his New York apartment building in March, and has since held him in a sprawling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana.<\/p>\n Last week, the New Jersey judge hearing Khalil\u2019s habeas corpus challenge against the government made<\/a> a simple demand: Present the legal precedent. Against this most basic directive to do their jobs, the government\u2019s attorneys filed a whiny formal objection<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Trump administration complained that it was \u201cmisguided\u201d to demand it swiftly present the legal basis for its extreme actions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n They should know the precedents because that is part of arguing the legality of a government action.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n The government is trying to use an obscure provision<\/a> under the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act that gives the secretary of state the power to deport people whose presence it deems <\/a>to create \u201cpotentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.\u201d Secretary of State Marco Rubio made just such a determination<\/a> in his effort to deport Khalil, as well as Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi<\/a>, who is also a green card holder, and Tufts University Ph.D. student R\u00fcmeysa \u00d6zt\u00fcrk.<\/p>\n Judge Michael Farbiarz\u2019s response to invocation of the obscure law seemed reasonable. Last Friday morning, he asked that the government provide examples of \u201cother instances\u201d of the provision\u2019s use by 5 p.m. that day.<\/p>\n Were the government\u2019s case anything but an authoritarian gambit, Justice Department attorneys would be able to present relevant precedent on demand. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n They should know the precedents because that is, surely, part of arguing the legality of a government action. And the government has had plenty of time to construct this argument: Khalil\u2019s attorneys filed the habeas petition the night he was detained by ICE, over two months ago.<\/p>\n Instead, the attorneys scrambled that day to produce a bare-bones response, and complained that \u201climited staff have been searching for records in response to the Court\u2019s orders as well as managing competing litigation requests and other priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n