Politico reports:

A federal judge has forcefully rejected a highly unusual lawsuit the Trump administration filed against 15 other judges whom the Justice Department accused of hindering the president’s mass deportation agenda.

In tossing out the lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen — an appointee of Donald Trump — lamented what he described as the White House’s months-long “smear” of the federal judiciary.

Cullen wrote in a 39-page decision Tuesday that the lawsuit was unprecedented, defective and the wrong way for the administration to pursue its grievances against the courts.

The Trump administration filed the lawsuit in June against all 15 judges who sit on the federal district court in Maryland. The lawsuit challenged that court’s policy of automatically pausing any deportation for two business days if the potential deportee files a special legal petition contesting the deportation.

The policy was adopted in May in a “standing order” signed by the chief federal district judge in Maryland, George Russell III, an Obama appointee. The Maryland court described the policy as a way to ensure the judges have time to consider immigration cases amid rapid-fire, mass deportation efforts.

The Justice Department argued that the policy operates as an illegal “automatic injunction” against the administration’s deportation efforts. The policy is “a particularly egregious example of judicial overreach interfering with Executive Branch prerogatives,” the department alleged.

The administration’s lawsuit in Maryland came amid an avalanche of harsh verbal attacks the White House has unleashed against judges across the country who have ruled against Trump’s immigration measures.

Cullen, who is based in Virginia, denounced those attacks in his ruling on Tuesday.

For months, Cullen wrote, top executive branch officials have attacked judges who rule against the administration as “‘left-wing,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘activists,’ ‘radical,’ ‘politically minded,’ ‘rogue,’ ‘unhinged,’ ‘outrageous, overzealous, [and] unconstitutional,’ ‘[c]rooked,’ and worse.”

“Although some tension between the coordinate branches of government is a hallmark of our constitutional system,” Cullen continued, “this concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it is both unprecedented and unfortunate.” [Continue reading…]