Retired U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin didn’t hold back Friday as she tore into White House adviser Stephen Miller’s suggestion that the Trump administration could unilaterally suspend migrants’ rights to challenge their detention in court.
Speaking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper hours after Miller made the eyebrow-raising comments, Scheindlin said flatly the suggestion is “ridiculous.”
“It's loony to do that,” the retired federal judge said. “There's no invasion.” Two judges have already ruled there’s no invasion under the Alien Enemies Act, she added.
“So there wouldn't be a basis in the world to suspend the great writ – the writ of habeas corpus.”
Scheindlin, who served on the federal bench in New York, said Miller’s comments not only ignore a cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution, but also amounted to a “veiled threat” against judges.
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“At the end of Stephen Miller's little statement, he said, ‘We'll see what the judges do. It depends if they do the right thing.’ That was another veiled threat against judges,” Scheindlin.
Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin also noted the gravity of what Miller proposed.
“Talking about suspending habeas corpus is such a wild step,” he told Cooper on Friday. “The only time a president has done it unilaterally without the authorization of Congress was Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.”
Scheindlin warned that such policies could devastate the U.S. international student population and harm the economy.
“We're going to lose all our foreign students,” she said. "We're going to lose all our revenue from that. So, again, this is a very bad idea.”
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