WASHINGTON — Three federal judges told the Trump administration Thursday what it didn’t want to hear: contracting out a detention center doesn’t contract out the Constitution.
A Ninth Circuit panel — Judges Margaret McKeown, Michelle Friedland and Eric Miller — unanimously denied the government’s emergency motion to stay a preliminary injunction over conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California’s High Desert, lifting the administrative pause it had granted while it considered the case. The order was first flagged Thursday by POLITICO’s ace courts reporter Kyle Cheney.
The government’s core argument was simple: don’t blame us, blame GEO Group, the private prison company that runs the infamously foul Adelanto day to day. The panel wasn’t having it.