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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

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Some updates:

  • The Trump administration has announced that, in addition to bringing federal charges against the perpetrator, they have taken into custody and are considering deporting six members of his immediate family who have also illegally immigrated.
  • USA Today quickly brought the sob story of one of those family members. And there is, after all, a fair complaint: we do not, generally, permit the sins of the father to flow to the son daughter. Even assuming a duty to report that pierces the family and that shirtless flamethrower guy was spitting a lot of cause for suspicion around his wife and kids (tbf...), it'd be worthwhile to at least specifically say some specific thing they should have done.
  • But it's not clear if there's reason they would not be deportable even without the whole 'family member tried to burn a dozen people alive'. They overstayed a tourist visa issued in 2022 and filed for asylum in that same year, from a country that most of the actual statutory grounds for asylum are pretty hard to hit (uh, especially for a guy with a wife).
  • And federal law specifically requires DHS to find inadmissable any spouse or children of anyone who has committed a "terrorist attack" in the previous five years. This doesn't exactly cover asylum hearings, but it's going to weigh pretty heavily on any that happen.
  • Except a judge has already issued a TRO for the next week. Anyone want to bet whether that gets extended by or on the 11th?
  • Notice some interesting parts to that? Ex parte, not sure if service had even been issued to the United States government, and... uh, that's not Soliman on the name plate. Nor even an organization any of the family belongs to. Instead, it turns out to be an immigration lawyer with a messy background herself. I haven't been able to find exactly what that immigration misconduct was, and it could be a minor thing, but it takes a lot to get actually suspended from the practice of law in an immigration context.
  • Because the family have been moved to Texas, it's not clear what, exactly, is going on between the lawyer and the family. It's very unclear how Gallager, a federal judge in Colorado, has jurisdiction.

Anyone want to bet whether that gets extended by or on the 11th?

Two more weeks, or until the order of the Fifth Circuit.

Still stayed.

With eight people, all older than fifty and some over eighty, facing serious burns, it'll be a minor miracle if there are no fatalities.

We didn't get a miracle.