Annotating the Judge’s Decision in the Case of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-Year-Old Detained by ICE

Our critic annotates the barbed wordplay of a decision challenging the Trump administration’s theory of executive power. It’s worth looking at how he does it. The extra in this case transforms what might have been a routine decision into a thorough scourging of the Trump administration’s approach to governance. This text isn’t much longer than one of Mr. Trump’s Truth Social posts. In fewer than 500 words, Judge Biery marshals literature, history, folk wisdom and Scripture to challenge the theory of executive power that has defined Trump’s second presidency. That may not have surprised some Texas court watchers. Judge Biery, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994, is known for his wit and writerly flair. His judicial order in a 2013 case involving San Antonio strip clubs is famous for its literary allusions (“to bare, or not to bare”) and its cheeky double entendres. A 2023 profile in San Antonio Lawyer magazine called him “ a judge with a little extra to say .” That’s the boilerplate. But Judge Biery’s decision — which has gotten a lot of attention in legal circles and beyond — is much more than a dry specimen of judicial reasoning. It’s a passionate, erudite and at times mischievous piece of prose. Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, an asylum seeker from Ecuador, were taken from Minnesota to Texas and held at a detention facility outside San Antonio. Lawyers working on their behalf filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, an ancient judicial principle forbidding the government from holding anyone in custody without providing a legally tenable reason for doing so. On Saturday, Fred Biery, a federal judge in Texas’s Western District, granted their petition, freeing them. One of the many unsettling images to emerge from the recent ICE surge in Minneapolis was that of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, in his blue bunny hat, standing in the January cold with the hand of a federal officer gripping his Spider-Man backpack. OPINION AND ORDER OF THE COURT Before the Court is the petition of asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son for protection of the Great Writ of habeas corpus. They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law. The government has responded. He starts by juxtaposing the grandeur of habeas corpus with the modesty of the father and son’s claims, implying that what makes the writ “Great” is precisely its ability to protect the basic right of ordinary people not to be locked up arbitrarily. It does this by requiring that the government either provide reasons for holding them in custody or else let them go. Judge Biery’s footnote directing readers to Blackstone’s commentaries and Magna Carta may be intended to give a remedial lesson to members of the administration. His larger point, though, is that to flout the guarantee of habeas corpus — as he insists the current deportation policy has done — is to threaten the integrity of the American constitutional order itself. The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures. He calls attention to the grandiosity and sloppiness of the administration’s position while suggesting that its overreach reflects a more sinister intention. Apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were: 1. “He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People.” 2. “He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.” 3. “For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.” 4. “He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures.” As the 250th birthday of American independence approaches, the president is being cast as King George III. The federal government’s indifference to habeas claims places it on the wrong side of the historical divide between individual liberty and unchecked state power, and thus at odds with the founding documents of the Republic. “We the people” are hearing echos of that history. And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized. U.S. CONST. amend. IV. Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. In...

Annotating the Judge’s Decision in the Case of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-Year-Old Detained by ICE

Continue Reading on New York Times

How do you feel about this article?

📝 Article Information

Author

Original Publisher

Published Date

Disclaimer

Annotating the Judge’s Decision in the Case of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-Year-Old Detained by ICE

Continue Reading on New York Times

How do you feel about this article?

📝 Article Information

Author

Original Publisher

Published Date

Disclaimer

More from New York Times