Court weighs unusual Trump lawsuit against Maryland-based federal judges

BALTIMORE — A judge on Wednesday will consider an unprecedented lawsuit in which the Trump administration sued all 15 Maryland-based federal judges over a standing order related to deportation cases.

The case is the latest escalation of the Trump administration’s war on the judiciary, which has been marked by criticism of judges who have ruled against the government over President Donald Trump’s bold and aggressive use of executive power.

At issue is a standing order issued by Chief Judge George Russell on May 21 and updated a week later that set rules for handling cases involving immigrants facing immediate risk of deportation. The order applies a temporary stay of deportation of a few days while the case is considered.

Russell is the top judge in the district of Maryland, which covers the entire state, and part of his job to set certain procedures for how cases are administered.

The order came in response to the flurry of actions taken by the Trump administration relating to immigration, including moves to deport people without due process. One of the most high-profile cases in the country, involving a Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported back to his native country before eventually being returned, arose in Maryland.

The order states that when an immigrant files a petition for habeas corpus in a federal court in Maryland, the government is temporarily prevented from deporting them until the claim can be adjudicated.

The automatic stay applies for roughly two days and, according to the government, has been applied to at least 12 cases so far.

The standing order is intended in part to “preserve existing conditions and potential and the potential jurisdiction of this court over pending matters,” Russell wrote.

Wednesday’s hearing is being held in the Baltimore federal courthouse but has been specially assigned to U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen, who normally sits in Virginia.

In court filings, Justice Department lawyers under Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the order “harms the federal government’s sovereign interests on a repeated and ongoing basis” because it applies even when the immigrant may have no valid legal argument or the court has no jurisdiction over the case.

The government argues that the court simply has no authority to issue such an order, which goes far beyond Russell’s authority as a chief judge.

In response, the judges have hired a legal team that includes Paul Clement, who served as solicitor general under President George W. Bush, a Republican.

Clement and his colleagues argue in their own filings that the lawsuit is “fundamentally incompatible with the separation of powers,” which assigns different functions to the president and courts.

The standing order constitutes a purely administrative procedure and does not reflect any consideration of the legal merits of any claim, they argue.

As such, it is a “modest effort to preserve the judiciary’s ability to perform its constitutionally assigned role,” they added.

Cullen, a former prosecutor, was appointed by Trump in 2020 with the backing of Virginia’s two Democratic senators.