Jim Himes on Deportation Orders: Trump Is ‘Exploring the Threshold of Ignoring a Court Order’

COOPER: “Congressman, do you think America is on the brink of a constitutional crisis here?”
HIMES: “For a great long last, Anderson, I do. You know, we’ve been, as you pointed out, throwing that term around pretty sloppily in the last two months or so. But the definition of a constitutional crisis, of course, is when you have no way to resolve two branches of government warring with each other. And, you know, you see exactly what’s happening here. It’s a very interesting moment because this is what Donald Trump does in life, right? You see him exploring the threshold of ignoring a court order, knowing because he said so before and because his people know this, that that is very serious business, that that is a constitutional crisis. So, they’re throwing every mad legal theory up against the wall. They’re dissembling, they’re taking their time and everything. And I’ll tell you, we’ve seen this movie a hundred times before. If these courts don’t stand up very quickly and say, we are going to hold individuals in contempt and start doing some of the things that courts can do when they hold individuals in contempt, you can bet that next week the encroachment will be a little bit bigger. And pretty soon this administration will be entirely ignoring court orders.”
COOPER: “Also, I mean, we should point out this judge isn’t saying that those individuals should be immune from deportation, nor is he saying they should be free to roam the streets. They are obviously already in custody. The issue is the law that’s being invoked to trigger the deportations. Why do you think the administration is choosing to go to the mat on this case?”
HIMES: “Well, there’s — that’s a separate issue. That’s the substance of the case. And, you know, we discover when somebody is willing to push the outer limits of the law, we discover that there are laws out there. This law that I presume almost no American had ever heard of, that the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State alone can decide that a non-U.S. citizen in the country is a danger to our foreign policy and deport them. You know, they are going to keep pushing these laws. In this case, of course, a law that goes back to shortly after the Revolutionary War to get exactly what they want, but that doesn’t — again, that’s entirely separate from the question of whether we push back hard right now on this administration’s initial penetrations into the world of defying a court order. So, regardless of the substance, this judge has to say, under no circumstances can this administration violate any court order. You know, you’ve already seen it on social media, with them denying the very idea that courts can review the actions of the president. Now is the time for the courts to push back and say, you better pay attention or we will start, you know, holding people in contempt and garnishing wages and that sort of thing.”