a judge with a little extra to say<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\nThe extra in this case transforms what might have been a routine decision into a thorough scourging of the Trump administration\u2019s approach to governance. This text isn\u2019t much longer than one of Mr. Trump\u2019s Truth Social posts. In fewer than 500 words, Judge Biery marshals literature, history, folk wisdom and Scripture to challenge the theory of executive power that has defined Trump\u2019s second presidency.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth looking at how he does it.<\/p>\n
OPINION AND ORDER OF THE COURT<\/p>\n
Before the Court is the petition of asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son for protection of the Great Writ of habeas corpus. They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law. The government has responded.<\/p>\n
He starts by juxtaposing the grandeur of habeas corpus with the modesty of the father and son\u2019s claims, implying that what makes the writ \u201cGreat\u201d is precisely its ability to protect the basic right of ordinary people not to be locked up arbitrarily. It does this by requiring that the government either provide reasons for holding them in custody or else let them go.<\/p>\n
Judge Biery\u2019s footnote directing readers to Blackstone\u2019s commentaries and Magna Carta may be intended to give a remedial lesson to members of the administration. His larger point, though, is that to flout the guarantee of habeas corpus \u2014 as he insists the current deportation policy has done \u2014 is to threaten the integrity of the American constitutional order itself.<\/p>\n
The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.<\/p>\n
He calls attention to the grandiosity and sloppiness of the administration\u2019s position while suggesting that its overreach reflects a more sinister intention.<\/p>\n
Apparent also is the government\u2019s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:<\/p>\n
1. \u201cHe has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People.\u201d<\/p>\n
2. \u201cHe has excited domestic Insurrection among us.\u201d<\/p>\n
3. \u201cFor quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.\u201d<\/p>\n
4. \u201cHe has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the 250th birthday of American independence approaches, the president is being cast as King George III. The federal government\u2019s indifference to habeas claims places it on the wrong side of the historical divide between individual liberty and unchecked state power, and thus at odds with the founding documents of the Republic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe the people\u201d are hearing echos of that history.<\/p>\n
And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment:<\/p>\n
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized.<\/p>\n
U.S. CONST. amend. IV. <\/p>\n
Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster.<\/p>\n
In constitutional terms, the judge finds that the administration has defied the Fourth Amendment and disregarded the separation of powers.<\/p>\n
That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.<\/p>\n
A barnyard metaphor puts the matter in plainer language: Because executive authority has the potential to be predatory, it needs to be checked by the judiciary branch. Judge Biery might also be sending a sly message to his colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court, who have looked favorably on many of Mr. Trump\u2019s expansive claims of executive branch power.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration\u2019s detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R. The Great Writ and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment.<\/p>\n
The language in which the judge renders his decision also sends a message, in this case to the president himself. Capitalization is a hallmark of Mr. Trump\u2019s style, as it is of American legalese. The paragraph granting the petition bristles with uppercase nouns, which makes it all the more striking that the president\u2019s name, otherwise absent from the ruling, is rendered in lowercase, as a card-table verb.<\/p>\n
This may be a subtextual swipe at the president\u2019s ego, but it\u2019s consistent with the decision\u2019s fundamental argument, which is that the president \u2014 any president \u2014 is ultimately smaller than the law.<\/p>\n
Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.<\/p>\n
For Judge Biery, the case involves procedure, and morality too. When he allows himself to express his disapproval \u2014 to write judgmentally, rather than judicially \u2014 he is in effect arguing that these principles can\u2019t be separated. Due process and human decency are two sides of the same coin.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation. But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: \u201cWell, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?\u201d \u201cA republic, if you can keep it.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike,<\/p>\n
It is so ORDERED.<\/p>\n
Benjamin Franklin famously (and perhaps apocryphally) pointed out the fragility of orderly self-government, while the Dutch boy immortalized in the 19th-century novel \u201cHans Brinker, or the Silver Skates\u201d did what he could to protect his neighbors from the fury of the unchecked sea.<\/p>\n
That Judge Biery puts himself in their company suggests that he sees this decision less as a final judgment than as a warning.<\/p>\n
SIGNED this 31st day of January, 2026.<\/p>\n
FRED BIERY<\/p>\n
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE<\/p>\n
Credit: Bystander<\/p>\n
After his cautionary conclusion, the judge still has something extra to say, something that shifts the focus away from the rational, secular domain of jurisprudence.<\/p>\n
Below his signature, he attaches the widely seen photograph of Liam. Underneath that \u2014 after an eloquently anonymous photo credit \u2014 are references to two verses from the New Testament. The judge doesn\u2019t quote them, but they speak for him all the same.<\/p>\n
Matthew 19:14<\/p>\n
The Matthew verse \u2014 \u201cBut Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: For of such is the kingdom of heaven\u201d \u2014 is a well-known statement of compassion and care.<\/p>\n
John 11:35<\/p>\n
So, in its way, is John 11:35, the shortest verse in the English Bible. It is often quoted when things are so terrible that all other words fail:<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus wept.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the many unsettling images to emerge from the recent ICE surge in Minneapolis was that of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130,3467],"class_list":["post-121464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-vis-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}