Judges in Maryland Want DOJ Suit Over Deportation Stays Tossed

The federal district judges in Maryland asked a court to dismiss a Justice Department lawsuit over an order blocking quick deportations, calling the unprecedented legal fight “fundamentally incompatible with the separation of powers.”

The US District Court for the District of Maryland, represented by top conservative lawyer Paul Clement and his law firm, in a Monday motion to dismiss said the lawsuit is “neither justiciable nor meritorious.”

The Justice Department in a June 24 complaint took issue with the court’s standing order that halted the immediate deportation of detained persons who filed a habeas petition, amid the Trump administration’s
immigration crackdown.

The judges said Monday that if the case moved forward, “the tensions between the branches produced by such a suit would only escalate,” and warned that it wouldn’t be the last such lawsuit if it’s not quickly rejected.

The judges said that temporary stays are common in litigation to make sure that courts have time to weigh the merits of the case, and pointed to the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit having a 14-day automatic stay against removal in certain immigration cases. And they argued that the Justice Department could have taken up issues with the order in individual cases, rather than suing the entire Maryland bench.

“This Court should make clear that this lawsuit has no proper place in our constitutional separation of powers, and that the standing orders do no more—or less—than preserve the Judiciary’s essential ability to ensure that justice is done to all who seek relief from the courts,” the motion reads.

Immigration Cases

The Maryland federal judges said in the filing that they had “borrowed a page” from the Fourth Circuit in crafting the two-day block on removal from the country, as they faced “a rising tide of last-minute immigration petitions” over the executive branch’s push to quickly deport people.

“Yet the Executive now asks this Court to hold that the Executive’s prerogative over immigration enforcement is so absolute that allowing the courts even a few days to assess whether there is a basis for further judicial relief amounts to an assault on the separation of powers,” the court said. “With respect, the only assault on the separation of powers here is the Executive’s unprecedented lawsuit, naming an entire judicial district as a defendant, severely disrupting the normal operations of the district, and attempting to deprive the Judiciary of a modest interval to discharge their core constitutional responsibility.”

The Maryland court has also been home to the high-profile legal fight over the removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, which the administration acknowledged was a wrongful deportation. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys are seeking sanctions against the government in that case. He was returned to the US to face allegations of human smuggling in federal court in Tennessee, and has pleaded not guilty to those charges.

The Maryland judges on Monday also argued there was no cause of action to file the lawsuit. They claimed the court is also shielded from the lawsuit under sovereign immunity, and that the judges and the court’s clerk are protected under judicial immunity while carrying out their official duties.

The judges said that, even if the lawsuit could be heard, the court has the right to issue temporary stays so it can maintain jurisdiction over a case.

The court is also fighting the Justice Department’s motion for a preliminary injunction in the litigation. DOJ attorneys on July 3 argued that the judges should be blocked from being able to enforce the standing order, calling it “an extraordinary form of judicial interference in Executive prerogatives.”

US District Judge Thomas Cullen of the Western District of Virginia, tapped to preside over the litigation, will hear oral arguments in the case on Aug. 13 in Baltimore.

The case is United States of America et al v. Russell et al, D. Md., No. 1:25-cv-02029, motion to dismiss and opposition to motion for preliminary injunction 7/21/25