Another day, another federal court halting President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda. On Tuesday, Judge Araceli Martinez Olguin of the U.S. District Court for Northern California issued a preliminary injunction preventing the president from ending federal funds going to immigration lawyers. In February, the Trump administration froze approximately $200 million in grants to the Acacia Center for Justice, a group of immigration lawyers providing free services to unaccompanied migrant children (UAC). The Acacia Center for Justice subsequently sued to unfreeze the funding.

In issuing her preliminary injunction unfreezing the funds, the Mexican-born, Biden-appointed Olguin reasoned that the funding freeze would do “irreparable harm” to the Acacia Center for Justice and “imped[e] their ability to provide the direct legal representation of unaccompanied children in immigration proceedings.” She wrote, “The Court additionally finds that the continued funding of legal representation for unaccompanied children promotes efficiency and fairness within the immigration system.”

According to a report from The Daily Signal, the number of UACs crossing the U.S. southern border has reached record lows under the Trump administration. U.S. Border Patrol encountered fewer than 650 UACs at the border last month, down 97% from the record monthly high of 18,716 UACs seen under the Biden administration. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed, “March was the lowest number of unaccompanied children arriving at our southern border in recorded history.” The news comes as the Trump administration broke its own record for lowest number of monthly illegal border crossings in U.S. history, down from 8,326 in February to 7,181 last month.

Olguin’s is simply the latest in a series of mostly district court-issued injunctions or temporary restraining orders (TROs) impeding the president’s agenda. One of the most controversial of these cases centers on the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798 to carry out mass arrests and deportations of Venezuelan nationals affiliated with the foreign terrorist organization Tren de Aragua (TdA). Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia previously issued a sweeping TRO barring the president from invoking the AEA to deport TdA members. The Trump administration has contested Boasberg’s order and subsequent ruling, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld Boasberg’s TRO last week, simply demanding that it be amended so that it does not enjoin the president himself, only his deputies and administration officials.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a request last week with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to vacate Boasberg’s order or, at the very least, issue an administrative stay, effectively restraining Boasberg’s TRO. “This case presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country — the President, through Article II, or the Judiciary, through TROs. The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President. The republic cannot afford a different choice,” wrote Acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris in petitioning the court to intervene. She recounted that Boasberg issued his sweeping TRO ex parte, without affording the Trump administration an opportunity to present arguments in defense of its actions. “That decision cries out for this Court’s intervention,” Harris wrote.

“Most fundamentally, respondents cannot obtain relief because they brought the wrong claims in the wrong court,” she added, arguing that the five deported Venezuelans who claimed to have no affiliation with TdA — despite the investigations and conclusions of law enforcement officers — should have filed a habeas corpus complaint in a federal court in Texas, instead of an Administrative Procedure Act (APA) complaint in a court in Washington, D.C. The acting solicitor general also addressed the appellate court’s refusal to grant a stay of Boasberg’s TRO, noting that appellate judges claimed that the Trump administration would “immediately resume” deportations if the TRO were stayed, without allowing the Venezuelans involved in the case a chance to file a habeas petition. “But respondents have already had almost two weeks in which to file habeas petitions in Texas. Having opted against the path the law provides, respondents cannot demand that their removal be enjoined until they pursue habeas anew,” Harris concluded.

The president himself, with Harris’s assistance, filed an additional argument before the Supreme Court regarding the same case, urging the justices — one-third of whom Trump appointed in his first term — to vacate Boasberg’s order and issue an administrative stay. The president’s counsel wrote, “This case is not about whether TdA members subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act get judicial review; they obviously do. Rather … the pressing issues right now are ‘procedural issues’ about where and how detainees should challenge their designations as enemy aliens. Those issues call for this Court’s resolution now.” Harris continued, on behalf of the president, “Otherwise, the wrong court (D.D.C.) is deciding the wrong issues (APA claims, not habeas) through the wrong device (a grossly improper class action), while the wrong remedy remains in place (a nationwide, classwide injunction).”

“If allowed to stand, those basic defects will require vacating whatever merits determinations the district court ultimately makes about the Alien Enemies Act,” the president’s counsel added. The argument continued, “[B]y insisting on proceeding with APA claims in the District of Columbia — not individual habeas proceedings in the Southern District of Texas — respondents are depriving the proper forum of the chance to flesh out the scope of habeas review and to start resolving individual challenges in an orderly way.” Harris added, “By persisting with an unlawful class action, respondents also inflict accumulating harms on absent class members, who risk being estopped from pressing habeas claims by virtue of being part of this class action.”

The president’s argument concluded, “A single district court cannot broadly disable the President from discharging his most fundamental duties, regardless of the order’s label, and irrespective of its duration. This Court should vacate this TRO, halt the tide of injunctions, and restore the constitutional balance.”