May 13, 2026 02:54 PM UTC

An Assault on the Constitutional Order: Stunning Numbers on ICE Legal Challenges

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• by: Colorado Pols

Colorado Republicans have been falling over themselves in support of the Trump administration’s supercharged immigration enforcement policies, offering up patently absurd arguments as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detain every brown person they can find — from senior citizens to small children.

The difference in opinions between Republicans and Democrats on immigration enforcement matters couldn’t be more clear. The same could be said of the legal arguments against expanded enforcement efforts.

As Kyle Cheney reports today for POLITICO, the Trump administration has been ignoring the law on immigration matters to a stunning degree:

Ten thousand losses.

That’s the Trump administration’s track record in court as federal judges grapple with the way ICE agents have swept through major U.S. cities and detained thousands of people in support of President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.

More than 10,000 times, judges have said those detentions, typically carried out with no opportunity for detainees to plead their case, were illegal. That’s roughly 90 percent of all cases — a staggering rejection of a core piece of Trump’s immigration agenda.

Trump’s unprecedented detention policy, which is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court, infuriated lower courts in ways no other modern issue has. It ruptured the relationship between the Justice Department and the judiciary; pitted the administration against itself; and upended innumerable lives — not just of the people swept up by immigration agents, but of their spouses and children, many of whom are U.S. citizens.

POLITICO has made available an entire database of the tens of thousands of legal challenges to expanded enforcement efforts.

The trend is clear from every angle. The administration has lost nearly 10,400 of the cases that have been decided, and prevailed in about 1,200. While some judges have heard more cases than others, the overwhelming majority of judges — more than 425 — have reached the same conclusion. Even a majority of Trump-appointed judges have sided against the administration. [Pols emphasis]

As POLITICO notes, this situation is unprecedented in American history, with judges across the country admonishing the Justice Department for defying court orders altogether. The response from Justice Department officials is typical Trumpian nonsense:

Justice Department spokesperson Natalie Baldassare, asked about the more than 10,000 rulings against the administration, replied: “That’s great, now the American people can see how judges are putting personal policy preferences ahead of proper interpretations of the law.”

When judges of varying political backgrounds reach the same conclusion 10,000 times, it’s fairly ridiculous to claim that your interpretation of the law is the correct version.

But for the Trump administration, up is down, the economy is great, and everybody else is doing it wrong.