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That is The Marshall Undertaking’s Closing Argument e-newsletter, a weekly deep dive right into a key prison justice concern. Need this delivered to your inbox? Join future newsletters.
This week, The Related Press revealed an inside Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo issued in Could 2025. It authorizes brokers to enter a personal dwelling to make an arrest with out first acquiring a warrant signed by a decide. The steerage — which quite a few authorized consultants say possible violates the Fourth Modification — represents simply the newest flashpoint in a dizzying yr of efforts by the Trump administration to develop the enforcement of immigration regulation.
These efforts have included makes an attempt to stretch using the wartime Alien Enemies Act, the controversial transfers of some detainees to a violent jail in El Salvador, and a speedy push to develop U.S. detention capability — first with tents, and, as just lately reported, into industrial warehouses as properly.
These intensified enforcement efforts have led to record-setting numbers of individuals in immigration detention — about 73,000 as of this week — and to sustained media protection and public outcry.
However whilst immigration actions have dominated the highlight, the administration has additionally moved shortly in different areas of the prison justice panorama.
Nowhere has that been extra obvious than on the Justice Division, the place beneath President Donald Trump and Legal professional Common Pam Bondi, the division has seen considered one of its most tumultuous intervals in fashionable historical past. Earlier this week, authorized analyst Chris Geidner referred to as the “destruction” of the division over the previous yr “exhausting to overstate.” Over 6,400 workers (out of about 108,000) have left, with lots of presumably fired for having labored on investigations that Trump thought-about illegitimate, together with probes into the rioters on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and inquiries into prison conduct by Trump throughout his first time period.
The exodus has hit divisions throughout the Justice Division, together with profession nationwide safety and counterterrorism prosecutors, in addition to the part that handles delicate public corruption circumstances. However the mind drain has been particularly pronounced on the Civil Rights Division. As of August 2025, about three-quarters of the legal professionals there had both resigned or been fired, in response to Bloomberg Information. Many left because the division turned towards its historic process of addressing discrimination towards marginalized teams, and as an alternative, urged its legal professionals to pursue circumstances towards what Bondi described as unlawful Variety, Fairness and Inclusion mandates.
Not solely has the division deserted a lot of its conventional remit, like investigating native police departments for civil rights abuses, it has additionally taken on new, unfamiliar work, like a Second Modification unit centered on “increasing gun rights.”
In response to criticism of this new course, a Justice Division spokesperson mentioned that Bondi and Civil Rights division chief Harmeet Dhillon have helped restore the division to its “authentic mission” of defending the rights of all Individuals. It’s price noting that Congress created the division as a part of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, aimed toward preventing racist Jim Crow segregation and disenfranchisement.
The primary yr of the administration has additionally been characterised by retreat from the Justice Division’s historic pledge of independence from the White Home. Bondi issued a “zealous advocacy” memo practically a yr in the past, declaring in essence that the division legal professionals are, in truth, Trump’s legal professionals. Since then, most of the division’s most seen strikes have been in service to Trump’s political conflicts as a lot as to conventional enforcement priorities. A rising listing of the president’s antagonists, together with former FBI Director James Comey, New York Legal professional Common Letitia James and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, have discovered themselves beneath investigation or indictment. In a number of of these circumstances, courts have thrown out costs or issued sharp rebukes of DOJ conduct.
Not less than one federal decide has additionally taken intention on the division’s choice to chop greater than half a billion {dollars} in Workplace of Justice Packages grants. The cash had been allotted to native governments, regulation enforcement companies and nonprofits for the whole lot from police coaching and tools, to providers for crime victims, neighborhood violence interruption applications and justice analysis. U.S. District Choose Amit Mehta referred to as the cuts ‘shameful,’ whilst he dominated challengers have been within the fallacious courtroom to attempt to cease it.
The Justice Division defended the cuts by arguing the awards not match division priorities, alongside broader cost-cutting efforts.
My colleagues Sophia Nabours and Geoff Hing discovered that the cancellations created speedy disruptions for recipients who needed to pause or cut back work, go away positions open, or lay off employees. In Shreveport, Louisiana, a victim-support nonprofit referred to as Mothers on a Mission, which works to help victims of gun violence, described having to drag again on trauma counseling and grief help teams after the cuts.
Equally, Daphne Duret and I discovered how the cuts affected a program in rural Alabama that paired sheriff’s deputies with psychological well being professionals when responding to sure calls. The cuts led to employees departures, and compelled officers again to dealing with psychological well being calls alone.
The consequences of funding cuts for analysis transcend what occurs at a person division or company. The Brennan Heart, a liberal-leaning criminal-justice assume tank, famous that ending analysis “make[s] it more durable for policymakers of all political stripes to repair shared issues.”
Some additionally fear that the cuts could imperil among the dramatic decreases in crime charges the nation has seen over latest years. In locations like Baltimore, native officers have instantly tied improved crime charges to nonprofit work that was minimize after DOJ grants have been eradicated.
Then there’s clemency, essentially the most direct presidential device within the prison justice system. Trump started his second time period with an unprecedented mass pardon masking roughly 1,500 folks charged or convicted of crimes associated to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. Since then, the White Home has continued to make use of clemency energy in ways in which depart from the Justice Division’s conventional evaluate course of — a shift underscored by the administration’s dismissal of pardon lawyer Liz Oyer, after she declined to fast-track a pardon for actor Mel Gibson, a private buddy of the president. Oyer has since written that Trump is making a “mockery” of the clemency course of.
The White Home has typically defended its pardons as a result of recipients have been “overprosecuted by a weaponized DOJ” beneath then-President Joe Biden.
The consequence has led to an casual course of that permits rich and politically related folks to skip the road, reported The Wall Avenue Journal. The president’s clemency docket now has a putting look of quid professional quo patronage. In a number of high-profile circumstances, Trump has granted pardons instantly after the recipient (or their shut family) poured cash into Trump-aligned political committees. In a single attribute instance, Trump pardoned former nursing dwelling government Paul Walczak of tax crimes simply weeks after Walczak’s mom attended a $1 million-per-seat fundraiser at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
As a result of Trump’s clemency efforts have been centered on rich folks convicted of white-collar crimes, he has additionally erased a historic quantity of restitution owed to crime victims and fines owed to the U.S. authorities. This week, NBC Information reported that Trump’s year-one pardons worn out practically $300 million owed by folks convicted of crimes. By comparability, over the 12 years of the Obama and Biden administrations, simply over $3 million in restitution and fines have been eradicated.
However whereas Trump has used clemency aggressively for a choose set of well-connected recipients, the broader thrust of the administration’s prison justice agenda has been towards harsher — and in some circumstances — extra violent punishment.
The Trump Justice Division signaled early in his second time period that it might lean again into the federal loss of life penalty, after authoring an execution spree late in his first time period. In between the 2 Trump presidencies, Biden commuted practically all federal loss of life sentences, leaving Trump with no lengthy listing of prisoners awaiting execution. In response, the administration is now pushing a number of states to file costs towards those self same folks, which may result in executions beneath the authority of state legal guidelines as an alternative.
Trump additionally embraced a de facto loss of life penalty for some folks accused of international drug trafficking, backing a marketing campaign of deadly navy strikes on suspected “drug boats” in worldwide waters — a pointy departure from the longstanding coverage of interdiction, arrest and trial for alleged narco traffickers. Final month, in an analogous vein, Trump signed an government order designating illicit fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction,” arguing it’s “nearer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic.” This week, Trump mentioned the administration will quickly start concentrating on drug trafficking by land as properly.
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