By The American Tribune | Created at 2025-04-03 10:42:31 | Updated at 2025-04-04 06:51:54
20 hours ago
Going berserk in a fiery tirade about immigration and deportation, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MA) freaked out about the Trump Administration’s deportations of gangsters affiliated with groups like Tren de Aragua and MS-13, demanding that those gangsters be returned to America.
As background, in March of 2025, the Trump Administration invoked the John Adams-era Alien Enemies Act to start deporting gangsters, particularly with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, to El Salvador’s CECOT prison. Judge Boasberg tried stopping Trump from doing so, leading to a still-escalating fight over executive power, judicial power, and deportations. It was in the context of that situation that Rep. Raskin went berserk in a hearing on Tuesday, April 1, and demanded the gangsters be returned.
During the hearing, which was before the House Judiciary Committee that Rep. Raskin is the ranking member of, Raskin both attacked Republicans for sounding off on Judge Boasberg, citing the much-detested SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts for his justification, and called on the Trump Administration to return the gangsters.
Speaking about the judicial coup effected by Judge Boasberg that Republicans have pushed back against, Raskin angrily declared, “Chief Justice John Roberts has said that the correct response to disagreement with the district court decision is to appeal it. I just heard Speaker Gingrich called this a ‘judicial coup d’etat,’ and he said the Chief Justice should stop lecturing the rest of us. Who’s right? Is it Newt Gingrich or is the Chief Justice Roberts?”
Responding to him, Kate Shaw, Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, said that Chief Justice Roberts is right. Professor Shaw said, to Raskin’s satisfaction, “In this instance, Chief Justice Roberts. We have no tradition of impeaching judges. Appeal is the remedy for disagreeing with the district judge […]There are many remedies our system affords if there is some sort of problem with the judge presiding over a case, but impeachment has never been in that tool kit.”
Later on, Raskin openly demanded that the Trump Administration bring gangsters back to America. He said, “I call on my colleagues right now to call off the campaign to impeach federal judges for doing their jobs. I call on them to demand that the Trump Administration comply with all judicial orders while appealing whichever ones they want to appeal, and to demand the return of people unlawfully taken to El Salvador on that so-called plane full of ‘gang bangers.’”
Continuing, Raskin pretended that conservatives are the real threat to law and order in America, snapping, “And I especially call on them today to denounce all violent threats, doxing, online vilification, and threats against our judges. This is the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives, and we should act like it.”
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Watch him here:
Raskin wasn’t the only one to lose it in the hearing. Also during it, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), the Atlanta-area representative who long ago asked if the island of Guam could “tip over and capsize,” at one point asked: “When you attack the judges and claim that they need to be impeached, not for high crimes and misdemeanors, but for simply ruling in a way that is against [Donald Trump], what impact does that have on our justice system and our democracy?”
The same liberal academic, Professor Shaw, told him: “I worry that the intent there is the same, to basically have a chilling effect on the willingness of judges to rule against the Administration. In the same way, I think part of the intent of these executive orders is to create a climate of fear and intimidation and to disincentivize taking on representations, including against the federal government.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
