The following hypothetical, which is answered below, illustrates the importance of today's Castro v. Trump opinion.
Let us suppose that one United States District Court judge denies a request for a nationwide injunction to bar deportation of illegal aliens, which aliens have already been issued (more than several months ago), a final order of removal and who argue that they are still entitled to challenge their impending removal to third-party countries as opposed to the country of their citizenship. This court finds the aliens are likely, if not certainly, to lose on the merits because the 30-day time limit to challenge the original order of removal has long passed.
Suppose another judge facing the same issue rules that such an injunction is warranted by “equity,“ and that the United States government must afford these aliens an additional 30 days to appeal being moved to a third-party country, setting this 30 day deadline regarding where they are being taken as a mirror image of the prior 30 day deadline to appeal the final order of removal, which original deadline, as noted has long since passed.
A third District Court judge issues a similar injunction stating that even though these persons about to be deported to a third country are now entitled to additional “due process“ and have the right to challenge their deportation to a third country rather than the country in which they are a citizen. However, this third judge does not set a specific deadline, instead relying on the litigants to argue over “due process" they are entitled to in each of their cases, stating the amount of "due process" which each is entitled-to depends on the practicalities of their bringing a challenge to third-party deportation while in custody.
The question becomes which ruling, meaning which "universal" or "nationwide" injunction, or, for that matter, which ruling against such an injunction, constitutes precedence as to other persons who are not named in the suit are similarly situated. We assume, of course, that the orders granting the injunction are written broadly to cover all persons. To make this a bit more interesting, we will suppose that each injunction is issued in a different District Court in a different Judicial Circuit, and that each of these Circuit Courts has refused requests to issue a stay of these trial court orders. We will also assume the Supreme Court has not yet weighed in on the issue of whether there is to be additional due process where there is to be removal to a third-party country.
The question, then, is: which injunction ruling will prevail in other parts of the United States?
The answer, at least according to leading law firms , is the government must abide by each injunction issued, even if not fully harmonious or in outright conflict
Our hypothetical is of course, similar to other recent injunction issued by Federal "trial court" Judges who have exercised virtually unlimited jurisdiction and attempted to control the execution of public policy by the executive branch, such as the direction of planes, the whereabouts of foreign citizens held in foreign jails, etc. Given that so many injunctions have been sought and granted, with counsel often from leading law firms, the question is which universal injunction should prevail when they are, to say the least, not entirely in sync.
The answer, of course, coming from the positions taken by many of the leading law firms in America, is that all of them prevail. This is because these law firms have argued for such broad jurisdiction that there is little, if any limit, on what an individual trial court judge may do. These suits seeking universal injunctions are usually brought in “equity” and, as these major law firms have argued, the jurisdiction of federal trial courts extends far beyond the litigants before them.
