If ever a man needed cheering up, it is me. Most recently, I have lost two dear friends. As for the larger story of us all, I am continually appalled by the simultaneous rotting of Donald Trump’s hands and mind and by his administration’s relentless destruction of the guardrails of American democracy.
So it is that I find myself thanking Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu for restoring a bit of my faith in America. Yes, my America, the way it once was.
Thanks as well to Bad Bunny for bringing sugar cane and street food, dominos and the decaying Puerto Rican electric grid, and Español to the Super Bowl—and, most importantly, to the attention of the American people.
But major props to Alysa Liu for recapturing the ice from ICE. Even, perhaps unconsciously, with her choice of music, reclaiming MacArthur Park for picnickers and lovers, yes, even tragic lovers, and the children of LA from the recent memory of Gregory Bovino and his military-style ICE raiders.
Federal authorities descended on a park where children were playing in California on Monday to conduct enforcement operations.
Dozens of federal agents in tactical gear, heavily armed and dressed in military-style uniforms, staged what seemed to be an immigration enforcement action, drawing swift condemnation from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who rushed to the scene in response.
‘What I saw in the park today looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation,’ said Mayor Bass, who told reporters there were children in the park attending a day camp.
‘We don’t comment on ongoing enforcement operations,’ a senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official told Newsweek.
Responding to the mayor’s criticism, Greg Bovino, the head of the ICE operation, made it crystal clear that he had every intention of continuing his raids to round up and arrest anyone they suspected was in the US illegally:
Then, again, Bovino asserted that ICE’s military-style roundups were the new normal for Los Angeles and America:
Now, like many, I loved Richard Harris’ version of Jimmy Webb’s “MacArthur Park” in the late 1960s. His Irish, almost Shakespearian theatrical rendition—yes, a bit dirge-like—was tear inducing, often heartbreaking. So very different from the Donna Summer version that Alysa Liu chose for her free-skating program. Summer’s disco adaptation added defiance, even some celebration—I could imagine Summer’s lover feeling regret for having chosen someone else.
While Harris’ cake always seemed doomed, Donna Summer’s cake seems to be daring the rain to obliterate it:
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
‘Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again
Oh no!
Anyway, Liu took all of Summer’s spirit and added much, much more to transcend the limitations of gravity. Skating on air. Defying the ice itself to soar alongside the departed Donna Summer, matching her intensity and commitment to make something glorious. I will leave Liu to her own imaginings—after growing up in Richmond/Oakland, she is now attending UCLA. And I am sure she has her own ideas about ICE and the city, but for me, it was the very best of MacArthur Park. A MacArthur Park where all of LA’s children can play free from the armed men with their masks and automatic weapons, free to dream of an America that is theirs, not ICE’s.
Liu’s school paper, the UCLA Daily Bruin, recounted her recent journey:
UCLA student Alysa Liu will return from the 2026 Winter Olympics with a pair of figure skating gold medals after winning the women’s singles title and helping the United States secure team gold with her short program performance.
The psychology student enrolled at UCLA in fall 2023, a year after retiring from elite figure skating following the 2022 Winter Olympics, where she placed sixth in single skating. But by the end of her freshman year – and after a nearly two-year hiatus from skating – Liu had returned to consistent training with the goal of competing once again.
In less than a year, the Oakland local had done just that, and more. Liu took silver at the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January – less than a year after returning to the sport. She topped the achievement by earning gold at the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships, recording the top scores in both the short and free programs and becoming the first American woman to earn the world championship title since 2006.
And Liu made history yet again in 2026, becoming the first American woman to earn an individual figure skating gold medal at the Olympics in 24 years with a final score of 226.79.
But the path to victory was not set in stone for the 20-year-old.
Liu’s podium hopes began Tuesday with the short program – just over a two-and-a-half-minute skate containing fewer technical elements and even less room for error. Skating to ‘Promise’ by Laufey, Liu completed three triple jumps and one double …
But an Olympian cannot medal on one skate alone, and Liu needed a near-perfect four-minute free skate Thursday to make history. And she delivered.
Liu performed a free skate set to Donna Summer’s ‘MacArthur Park Suite,’ smiling through seven triples and four doubles to earn a 150.20 – the highest score of the night. She did not receive a negative grade of execution on any element and posted a routine-high 12.98 on her triple Lutz-double Axel-double toe loop combination.
And though Liu did not attempt a triple axel or any quad jumps – elements that carry higher base values – her clean free skate vaulted her into first place, above Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai, who finished with silver and bronze, respectively … The psychology student will return to Westwood not only as a two-time Olympian but as a two-time gold medalist, completing a comeback few would have predicted when she stepped away from the sport.
And here is Alysa Liu with her gold medal:
I was transported by the extraordinary combination of Liu’s proficiency and her almost indescribable artistry—a rare mixture of performance honed by hours of dedicated practice that was imbued with something you can’t really touch or measure. It was the kind of inspiration that is only rarely revealed by those others who manage to defy limitation: artists like John Coltrane, Ludwig van Beethoven, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Michael Jordan, Stephen Curry, Willie Mays, Ella Fitzerald, and Nina Simone, to name just a few.
Everything about Liu’s performance was proudly authentic. It seems obvious just watching, but everything about Alysa Liu these days is her—her choices, not her father’s or her trainers or her fans. She seems to have dispensed with expectations. Now, from my undoubtedly eccentric point of view, everything about Alysa Liu violates the new “MAGAmerican” standards. She is not white, not contained or constrained or conservative. From her sparkling frenulum piercings and raccoon-like wide blonde and black stripes, she sends me back to the 1960s, to the America I fought so hard for: diverse, brave and independent.
I don’t know if she realizes it, but in many ways, Alysa Liu is a MAGA nightmare. She is the daughter of an immigrant, a man who risked his life to fight authoritarianism, and a surrogate mother. Her father Arthur was one of those young people in China who yearned to be free from the oppressive dogma of the regime and took to Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989, protesting alongside the many thousands until Li Peng sent in his tanks to crush them. Liu fled and ultimately made it to the United States, where, like many of those who come to America, he worked his way up, starting as a busboy and attending school.
An immigration attorney, I imagine he is well aware that 37 years later, Donald Trump would gladly deny him entry into the United States. And I am guessing he takes great pride that he found a way to mock China’s disastrous 1980 one-child policy. Again with surrogates, he has created a loving family of five that includes Alysa’s siblings, Selina and triplets Julia, Joshua, and Justin.
I doubt many remember, but MAGA and Project 2025 proclaimed dogmatic allegiance to “family values” and what they called the male-female dyad. And they have vociferously denounced surrogacy along with other reproductive rights. You could reasonably say that if it was up to MAGA, there would indeed be no Alysa Liu:
And there is this:
Media Matters offered this guide to what the many contributors to and adherents of Project 2025 said about surrogacy:
Here is an example of what Media Matters found:
Heritage Foundation senior research associate Emma Waters has written extensively against assisted reproductive technologies, particularly IVF and surrogacy. Her opposition draws on unsubstantiated concerns about possible harms to children who lack access to both biological parents and on biblical teaching about proper procreation … Waters argued that surrogacy and IVF translate to ‘concubinage’ and ‘a form of slavery.’ In the same piece, she wrote that the surrogacy and IVF ‘industry functions as a form of commercialized and contractual baby selling.’ … Waters cites the Bible to attack surrogacy, writing that ‘such actions produce pain, hardship, and sin in the lives of those who partake.’ Waters referenced Genesis 2, in which ‘God gave man and woman strict boundaries through which to procreate.’ She went on, writing that using a surrogate or gamete donation is ‘a violation of the seventh commandment’ and likening the procedure to adultery.
[Emphasis added.]
It took but a moment for me to disabuse myself of the notion that Alysa Liu had accomplished too much and inspired too many to be attacked by the MAGA faithful. But I ever so quickly remembered those extraordinarily accomplished Americans like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has literally saved millions, and others like Jack Smith, who has a long career prosecuting and convicting criminals here in the United States and around the world, to once again realize the authors of Project 2025 are so deluded and so arrogant as to imagine themselves qualified to cast out their neighbors. And so, I am hoping for a miracle: that MAGA is so busy pretending that the Epstein files don’t really reveal what they surely do, that MAGA is so intent on denying that the man who bragged about grabbing women by their private parts did, in fact, do that too many times to the underage that they will let Liu keep soaring.
As far as I am concerned, if Alysa Liu is the product of sin, please give me a million more of her.
There is, of course, another side of this story. And like many an immigrant, hard working and determined to make a better life now safe here in the U.S. and intent on establishing a family, Arthur Liu fell into a familiar American trap: the lure of success. Seeing her rare skill on the ice and her seeming joy as a five-year-old, he imagined he could make Alysa a star like Michelle Kwan. And because Alysa was blessed with the rarest of talent, he did everything he could to make that happen. As she later said, her skating and her artistry became his business. But Alysa was braver than most, and like her piercings and her hair reveal, she is, above all, a free spirit.
After all, in many ways, Alysa Liu is her father’s daughter. Because skating no longer felt right, she left what had ironically become her version of China, no longer engaged or inspired when others determined what she wore and how she skated. Rather than continue without control and missing the joy she had begun with, Alysa surprised everyone, including her father, when she stepped away from the sport. When she returned, it was with a very new spirit: She was now collaborating with her team, no longer responding to their directions.
This is what she told the NBC interviewer right after her victory:
NBC: I know that you wanted to come back on your own terms … take more control over what you were doing, how rewarding is it not only to win but win doing it your way
ALYSA LIU: Oh my God I mean being able to do it my own way on the big stage like this has been my dream and I got to do it um – I got to do it in the team event, I got to do it tonight in the free skate and I’m going to do it again for the Olympic gala, so I don’t know I’m just …I’m like over the moon, I’m the luckiest girl ever and I’m really grateful …
NBC: Your coach Philip told me once that you hate when people ask you, ‘Why don’t you get nervous?’ How are you able to skate with so much joy and where does that joy come from when you’re on the ice?
LIU: I mean I’m … I guess I love … what I like to share about myself is my story and my art, my creative process … I guess messing up doesn’t take away from that … it’s still something … it’s still a story, you know a bad story, is still a story. And I think that’s beautiful so there’s no way to lose …
NBC: I know you put so much time in your program — what were you hoping to show on the ice tonight, what was the story you were trying to tell?
LIU: Um well I was trying to show off my dress, this is a new dress … um and I really like it … I was also um focused on engaging with the audience, so in between my transitions … they’re kind of seated high up so I really took moments to look at people … um smiled at them, give them a little shoulder, you know, engage with the crowd and I did just that so … I’m really happy …
It is so interesting that Alysa Liu so accurately captured the spirit of the stories that Jimmy Webb and Donna Summer were also telling.
I found this interview Alysa Liu had previously given to Lea Veloso of Stylecaster. Veloso shared their conversations about her hair, her piercings, her style and her skating:
In and out of the rink, she’s subverting the traditional expectations for figure skaters. Sporting a halo dyed hair, dark eyeliner, and a piercing, the Olympic gold medalist dances to artists on every alt girl’s playlist like Mitski, Laufey, and Lady Gaga. She’s also often mistaken for another kind of athlete. ‘I’ll be at something for athletes, and they’re like, “You’re a snowboarder, aren’t you?” I’m like, “Actually, I’m a figure skater, but thank you,” [sic] she recalled to Elle.
…
Alysa Liu doesn’t have anything on her teeth. When she smiles, you can see a smiley frenulum piercing, which is done in the piece of tissue connecting the upper lip to the gums. According to the skater, she did the piercing herself. ‘I had my sister hold up my lip and I was looking in the mirror and I had my piercing needle and yeah, just put it through,’ she said.
On the In the Loop podcast, Alysa Liu went in depth about the piercing process. ‘I guess that’s another hobby I picked up. Getting pierced at a shop is really expensive for no reason. So I thought I would learn it myself, be a little DIY girl, but yeah, so I picked that up just because it’s cheaper and I trust myself a lot to get it in the right spot, placement wise for the jewelry. I bought all the supplies I would need like piercing needles. …’
…
Along with her piercing, she also has a meaningful story behind her halo hair. ‘Every year, I add a stripe,’ Alysa explained in an interview with NBC. ‘It’s gonna be like this for a year, then—next wintertime, end of December—I do another ring.’
She’s gotten it professionally touched up by hairstylist Kelsey Miller. ‘Figure skating gives off the persona of sophistication, grace, and elegance,’ Miller told The FADER in an interview. ‘[But Liu proves] you can still be those things and skate while being your true self and rocking your personality. You can listen to alternative music and wear dark eyeliner under your eyes. When you watch her skate, she skates so gracefully, and you can truly tell it’s her passion. It’s amazing watching the two worlds collide.’
Quite frankly, her gold-medal skating was one of the very few Olympic events I actually watched. It says something about my sadness and anger at what our country has become, disgust with the Trumpian hatred that has led to the masked men and the brutal arrests and the relocation of immigrants to concentration camp-like detention centers, that I have so embraced Alysa Liu’s magnificent performance.
Having written a bit of fiction, I am well aware of my ability to imagine new possibilities, invent new people, concoct new dilemmas and opportunities. So perhaps I have imbued Alysa Liu with the remarkable ability to transform ICE into ice, to turn their nightmarish totalitarian mission into a glorious medium, to turn Trump’s ICE into her ice, the perfect place for her joyful embrace of free and brave expression.
Like the very best of actors, Alysa Liu took me along with her. For me, it was quite a remarkable accomplishment. Because, for me, on the streets of the Bronx, sports were always stickball and touch football, played in and amongst the traffic. We played basketball with metal backboards and softball on tar. We roller skated on metal wheels. I turned both my ankles several times along the way, and not surprisingly, I found ice skating nearly impossible.
Unfortunately, as Alysa Liu’s performance fades, for the moment, at least, Donald Trump’s ICE prevails. You had only to watch FBI Director and class clown Kash Patel chugging beer with the men’s hockey team to see how pathetic MAGA has become and then, with the State of the Union address, to witness how neutered Congress remains. How often the servile and subservient Republicans forced themselves to stand and cheer one outrageous, impossible-to-believe lie after another. With their naked king they pretend that life is actually the best it has ever been in America, still choosing to embrace short-term political survival over long-term responsibility. As hard as they pretend, they must know, and they must see when they return to their districts, that fewer and fewer of their constituents are able to find that elusive Donald Trump two-dollar-a-gallon gasoline or lower-priced electricity or reasonable rents. Fewer and fewer still believe it is OK to arrest the five-year-old bunny-hat-wearing Liam, to pretend that Liam is that violent murderer/rapist we are targeting.
So here we are, and as Alysa Liu’s transcendence fades, I am left with the reality that there remains work to be done. If America has gotten better over these past centuries, it has been dragged there by waves and waves of the courageous: the abolitionists, the suffragettes, the Wobblies and the anarchists, the trade unionists, those who went to Selma and fought at Stonewall. Yes, this most recent assault on progress that we have been living through, the relentless attack on equity and diversity, has been as bad as it gets. Do you remember how those earliest rhetorical references to tyranny, to Germany, and pleas that “it can’t happen here” were repeatedly mocked as exaggeration? Well, haven’t they become reality with masked men, armed to the teeth, demanding that Black and brown folks, even white witnesses, present their papers, dragging them out of cars and off to jail—the Bill of Rights be damned?
Yes, it took some years to loosen the shackles imposed by our hard-earned liberal politeness. There were those years when one had to hide one’s hatred. Racism and sexism were sent undercover. But Trump’s inner bigot just would not let him call out Charlottesville for what it was—he could not bring himself to condemn the Nazis or the new version of the Klan. With Stephen Miller at his side, it was once again acceptable to be all in on white power and their more esoteric Great Replacement Theory.
As always, it helps to lie. The caravans of rapists and murderers all here to plunder, all enabled by the Democrats and the Sanctuary City radicals and, worse, the Antifa terrorists. Lie long enough and some voters will believe in Haitians eating dogs and cats and all those Mexicans on Medicaid and free food stamps and those who vote multiple times with stolen mail-in ballots. Lie long enough and they will tolerate masked men refusing to identify themselves and shooting those who observe and film them. While once it was hard to imagine, now Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security routinely lies in court and ICE officers, despite video evidence, deny their violent tactics and defiantly refuse to follow the very court orders that attempt to reign in illegal behavior.
The New York Times writes:
Judge Sara L. Ellis said she saw ‘little reason for the use of force that the federal agents are currently using,’ and said Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official, had lied about his use of tear gas in Chicago. …
A federal judge castigated the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday for its aggressive use of force during an illegal immigration crackdown in Chicago in recent weeks, banning the use of tear gas and other crowd-control weapons ‘unless necessary to stop the immediate threat of physical harm.’
Judge Sara L. Ellis, of Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, said that government officials, including the senior Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino, had repeatedly lied about their own tactics and the actions of protesters.
The injunction granted by Judge Ellis on Thursday extends temporary restrictions that she issued last month. Judge Ellis ordered federal agents to wear body cameras, give at least two audible warnings before using riot control weapons, and to use those weapons only to ‘preserve life or prevent catastrophic outcomes.’
She said the restrictions were necessary because immigration agents in Chicago had pointed guns at civilians who were not presenting a physical threat, used pepper spray, deployed tear gas and shot pepper balls.
‘I see little reason for the use of force that the federal agents are currently using,’ Judge Ellis, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, said in a ruling from the bench. She added: ‘The use of force shocks the conscience.’
A representative for the Department of Homeland Security said that the department will appeal the injunction, which the representative described in a statement as ‘an extreme act by an activist judge that risks the lives and livelihoods of law enforcement officers.’ The statement said that even as federal agents have faced serious threats from protesters, ‘our law enforcement shows incredible restraint in exhausting all options before force is escalated.’
Judge Ellis’s ruling followed an eight-hour preliminary injunction hearing on Wednesday, a proceeding that offered a split-screen view of the arrests and clashes that have played out on Chicago streets under the Trump administration’s federal crackdown on illegal immigration for more than two months.
Clergy members, protesters and other Chicago residents described aggressive tactics used by federal immigration agents, including firing tear gas in residential neighborhoods without warning, throwing protesters to the ground during arrests and shooting pepper balls at a minister’s head while he stood in prayer. Lawyers for the Justice Department countered by calling as a witness a supervisor for the Border Patrol, who testified that while the agency had used force during protests and arrests, none of it had been without justification.
Mr. Bovino, the Border Patrol official who has been leading this year’s operations in Chicago and Los Angeles, appeared on video in a taped deposition, during which he said that all of the uses of force by his agency’s officers have been ‘more than exemplary.’
[Emphasis added.]
Judge Ellis is just one of many judges who have attempted to reign in the Department of Homeland Security’s use of excessive force:
Just recently, The New York Times reported:
At least 35 times since August, federal judges have ordered the administration to explain why it should not be punished for violating their orders in immigration cases. …
The judge was angry. She had ordered a detained immigrant to be released in Minnesota, but instead he was let go in El Paso, where he had to spend the night in a shelter. All his property was supposed to have been returned, but the government was still holding his identity papers.
‘Why should I not hold you in contempt?’ the judge asked a Justice Department lawyer at a hearing last week. Instead of answers, she got excuses.
‘I don’t think there was ever any intention to defy the court orders,’ said the lawyer, Matthew Isihara, a military judge advocate on temporary assignment to the Justice Department. ‘We were doing our best and things, unfortunately, slipped — slipped through the cracks.’
That explanation was not enough for Judge Laura M. Provinzino of the Federal District Court for the District of Minnesota. Last Wednesday, she found Mr. Isihara in civil contempt of court.
Legal experts said her ruling marked the first time during President Trump’s second term that a judge had attempted to assert authority by issuing a civil contempt ruling, which enforces a judicial order by imposing a penalty until the offending party complies. In this case, Judge Provinzino ordered Mr. Ishiara to pay $500 a day until the identity documents were returned.
But the anger Judge Provinzino flashed at Mr. Isihara has been repeated in courtrooms across the country amid Mr. Trump’s drive to deport large numbers of immigrants. A New York Times review of federal dockets found at least 35 instances since August in which federal district court or magistrate judges issued an order requiring the government to explain why it should not be similarly punished for violating court orders, essentially giving officials one last chance to explain themselves.
Those so-called ‘show cause’ orders came from judges in California, Texas, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, West Virginia and Puerto Rico. They all arose from cases in which the government had detained immigrants who had been living in the United States for years after entering the country illegally.
[Emphasis added.]
In other cases, the government has incorrectly stated the law and proceeded to act illegally, attempting to evict someone who has been living in the country for years. Judge Roy B. Dalton Jr. ruled on the case of Javier Gimenez Rivero who petitioned the court for a writ of habeas corpus and a temporary restraining order. Javier Gimenez Rivero, a high school student, was brought over the border by his parents when he was a minor. He was paroled and permitted to enter the country, and his parents filed for asylum. Javier, in high school, was issued a driver’s license, a Social Security card, and a U.S. employment authorization document.
His petition states:
Gimenez Rivero continued to live, work, and attend school here in Central Florida for years without incident until Wednesday, January 7, 2026, when he was arrested by Orange County Sheriff’s Officers … He had not committed any crime … In fact, he has no criminal record … Nor did the officers have a notice for him to appear for removal proceedings. … Indeed, removal proceedings had not yet begun … Rather, officers just told Gimenez Rivero he was being arrested because he was ‘undocumented.’ … They took him to the Orange County Jail, where he was held under a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (‘ICE’) detainer for days without criminal charges, a notice to appear, a warrant, a hearing, or any written notice of the basis of his detention … Five days later, on January 12, ICE told Gimenez Rivero that it was moving him to an immigration detention facility in Miami.
So Gimenez Rivero’s attorneys at the Arroyo Law Firm filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, arguing that his warrantless arrest and detention are unlawful and seeking to prevent his transfer from the local jail … The following day, counsel filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order (‘TRO’), seeking Gimenez Rivero’s immediate release …
On January 14, the Court issued a brief Order granting the TRO only to the extent that the named Respondents — the Sheriff, the Orange County Corrections Chief, ICE, the Warden of the Orange County Jail, and the U.S. Attorney General — were ordered not to remove Gimenez Rivero from the Orange County Jail, to preserve the status quo pending an emergency hearing. … The Court then found that the Petition was likely to succeed on the merits and ordered an accelerated response from the Government … On January 16, nine days after Gimenez Rivero was detained, four days after the Petition was filed, and two days after the Court’s Order, ICE issued him a Notice to Appear, beginning removal proceedings … The notice advised that Gimenez Rivero was an ‘alien present in the United States who has not been admitted or paroled’ and set a hearing before an immigration judge for two months later …
The Government argued that this Court lacks jurisdiction over the Petition under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(g), which governs decisions to commence removal proceedings. (Id. at 4 (citing Gupta v. McGahey, 709 F.3d 1062 (11th Cir. 2013)).) The Government also argued that Gimenez Rivero is subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225, so no warrant or notice was required to detain him … Gimenez Rivero replied, arguing that neither § 1252(g) nor § 1225 apply … On January 21, at an emergency hearing, the Court orally granted the Petition and motion and ordered the Government to immediately release Gimenez Rivero, who went home to his family that day … This written Order memorializes the Court’s oral pronouncements.
Judge Dalton detailed the several ways the government misstated the law. As for jurisdiction:
The Government, citing Gupta, argues that this Court lacks jurisdiction under § 1252(g) to hear the Petition because ‘[s]ecuring an alien while awaiting a removal determination constitutes an action taken to commence proceedings’ … This argument beggars belief and appears to deliberately mislead the Court about the law and the record. It is well-settled that courts have habeas jurisdiction to consider ‘challenges to the lawfulness of immigration-related detention.’ … Here, Gimenez Rivero explicitly challenges the basis for his detention, not the decision to commence removal proceedings … The Government’s argument to the contrary is, in a word, inexplicable. As a factual matter, challenging the decision to commence removal proceedings would have been a rather difficult thing for Gimenez Rivero to do in the Petition…given that removal proceedings were not actually commenced until days after he filed the Petition.
[Emphasis added.]
As to merits, Dalton notes:
The Government’s argument on the merits is similarly ill-informed. Citing Jennings, the Government insists that Gimenez Rivero is subject to mandatory 6detention under § 1225 … Jennings compels the opposite conclusion. Two pertinent statutory provisions govern the detention of noncitizens: 8 U.S.C. §§ 1225 and 1226. See Jennings, 583 U.S. at 296–306. Section 1225 applies to ‘aliens seeking entry into the United States.’ Id. at 297. Section 1226 applies to ‘aliens already present in the United States.’ Id. at 303 …
The Government does not even mention § 1226, arguing instead in blanket and cursory fashion that § 1225 applies to all aliens who have not been admitted so they do not have to provide bond hearings … This reading of the statute is, put plainly, incoherent. The Government’s position ignores the everyday meaning of the statutory text … And it disregards more than half a century of precedent enshrining into law the heightened protections applicable to noncitizens already living within our borders.
[Emphasis added.]
As for remedy: “With the Government having asserted no lawful basis for his detainer, this Court could only conclude that Gimenez Rivero was entitled to immediate release.”
Finally, as for sanctions:
Gimenez Rivero’s immediate release provides him with the remedy he deserves. But it does not remedy everything that happened in this Court. Judges across the country—the vast majority who have considered this question — have told the Government many times in the past few months that its interpretation of the law is wrong. See Bethancourt Soto, 2025 WL 2976572, at *7.
This is no partisan stance: judges appointed by every President from Ronald Reagan through Donald Trump have said so. This Court no longer has the power to issue a nationwide injunction to stop the Government from reasserting this same baseless argument en masse. See Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. 831, 861 (2025).
But no matter what is happening outside this Court, the rules inside it remain the same. Everyone who presents a filing to the Court represents that the factual contentions have evidentiary support and the legal contentions are warranted. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 11. If the Government is going to argue for expanding the interpretation of a law or maintain a widely rejected position to preserve its appellate rights, it may do so. But its lawyers must make those arguments in a way that comports with their professional obligations, as lawyers have done since time immemorial: Cite the contrary binding authority and argue why it’s wrong. Don’t hide the ball. Don’t ignore the overwhelming weight of persuasive authority as if it won’t be found. And don’t send a sacrificial lamb to stand before this Court with a fistful of cases that don’t apply and no cogent argument for why they should.
Members of this Bar have a duty of candor to the Court. The Government’s response … does not meet that standard. So U.S. Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe, Esq., and Assistant U.S. Attorney Joy Warner, Esq., must show cause why they should not be sanctioned.
[Emphasis added.]
It was only months later, thanks to a whistleblower, that we learned that the Department of Justice had decided to disregard the fundamental, Constitutionally protected prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure.
AP News explains:
Federal immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press, marking a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.
The memo authorizes ICE officers to use force to enter a residence based solely on a more narrow administrative warrant to arrest someone with a final order of removal, a move that advocates say collides with Fourth Amendment protections and upends years of advice given to immigrant communities.
The shift comes as the Trump administration dramatically expands immigration arrests nationwide, deploying thousands of officers under a mass deportation campaign that is already reshaping enforcement tactics in cities such as Minneapolis.
For years, immigrant advocates, legal aid groups and local governments have urged people not to open their doors to immigration agents unless they are shown a warrant signed by a judge. That guidance is rooted in Supreme Court rulings that generally prohibit law enforcement from entering a home without judicial approval. The ICE directive directly undercuts that advice at a time when arrests are accelerating under the administration’s immigration crackdown.
The memo itself has not been widely shared within the agency, according to a whistleblower complaint, but its contents have been used to train new ICE officers who are being deployed into cities and towns to implement the president’s immigration crackdown. New ICE hires and those still in training are being told to follow the memo’s guidance instead of written training materials that actually contradict the memo, according to the whistleblower disclosure.
Here is the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
We learn each and every day how fragile our democracy really is, how cowardly so many are when faced with an autocrat determined to tear apart the hard-earned guarantees of our Constitution. Who would have imagined a Supreme Court so willing to grant a president king-like immunity for his crimes against the people?
Arthur Liu and so many members of his generation occupied Tiananmen Square and cities throughout China demanding democratic reform. Li Peng and the regime ultimately decided to crush what they regarded as a rebellion, murdering as many as 10,000.
When it comes to despots, there are far more similarities than differences. Make no mistake, freedom is a constant struggle. And it becomes more and more clear that we have a choice to make: Do we want the terror of Donald Trump’s ICE or the joy of watching Alysa Liu fly on ice?
