On Easter Sunday, former President Donald Trump took to social media to send out what at first seemed like a holiday greeting. But instead of a traditional Easter message, he used the opportunity to go on a political rant, aiming his anger at judges and law enforcement officials who have ruled against his immigration policies.
In his post, Trump harshly criticized what he called “Radical Left Lunatics” and accused them of trying to bring violent criminals, drug traffickers, mentally ill individuals, and gang members specifically referencing MS-13 back into the United States.
While he didn’t name names directly, his post seemed to refer to the recent case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man from Maryland who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador even though he had legal protections to remain in the U.S.
Trump’s post was published on Truth Social, the platform he launched after being banned from other major social media sites. This kind of rhetoric has become common in his holiday messages, which he often uses to lash out at his opponents rather than deliver traditional well-wishes.
He accused judges and law enforcement of being too weak and ineffective to stop what he sees as threats to national security and public safety. This specific outburst came shortly after the U.S.
Supreme Court stepped in to temporarily stop his administration from continuing to deport certain Venezuelan immigrants under an old and rarely used law known as the Alien Enemies Act. This law, dating back to 1798, gives the president special powers during wartime to detain or deport immigrants from countries considered enemies of the United States.
Trump’s criticism came in the wake of several legal decisions that have gone against his administration’s immigration actions. One of the most high-profile cases involves Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been living in the U.S. with a status called “withholding of removal.” That status protected him from being deported and allowed him to work and live in the country legally.
Despite that, he was removed from the U.S. and sent to El Salvador in March, something that federal courts have since ruled was a mistake. A judge in Maryland, Paula Xinis, along with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and even the Supreme Court, has ordered the government to help bring him back to the U.S. Trump’s administration pushed back, saying it didn’t have the authority to return someone once they’ve been deported.
They also attempted to justify his removal by claiming that Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, a dangerous gang. However, Judge Xinis pushed back hard against that accusation, saying the claim was vague and unsupported by any solid evidence. She made it clear that if the administration wanted to make that claim, it needed to prove it in court not rely on speculation or unverified claims.
The government admitted that Garcia’s deportation was a mistake. A senior official from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Robert Cerna, filed a sworn statement saying the deportation was due to a clerical error and called it an oversight.
Despite that admission, the administration still resisted efforts to bring him back and continued to argue that he posed a danger, even without providing convincing proof. The case raised major concerns about how deportation decisions are made and whether there are enough safeguards to prevent people with legal protection from being wrongly removed from the country.
In another recent development, the Supreme Court blocked the government from continuing deportation flights that were sending Venezuelans to El Salvador, even though they weren’t originally from there. Over 200 Venezuelans had already been deported in these flights.
The action was challenged in court, with U.S. District Judge James Boasberg stating that these deportations likely violated the migrants’ due process rights. He pointed out that the people being deported may not have been given a fair chance to plead their cases or challenge the decision, raising serious legal and human rights questions.
All of these developments show growing tension between Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda and the limits set by the courts. Judges are increasingly pushing back against what they see as overreach, while Trump continues to frame the situation as a fight between him and what he describes as a radical, soft-on-crime opposition.
His Easter message was just the latest example of how he continues to use every opportunity, even a religious holiday, to push his political views and attack those who stand in his way.
