That is The Marshall Mission’s Closing Argument e-newsletter, a weekly deep dive right into a key felony justice challenge. Need this delivered to your inbox? Join future newsletters.
This week, The Related Press revealed an inside Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo issued in Might 2025. It authorizes brokers to enter a non-public dwelling to make an arrest with out first acquiring a warrant signed by a choose. The steerage — which quite a few authorized consultants say doubtless violates the Fourth Modification — represents simply the newest flashpoint in a dizzying yr of efforts by the Trump administration to increase the enforcement of immigration regulation.
These efforts have included makes an attempt to stretch using the wartime Alien Enemies Act, the controversial transfers of some detainees to a violent jail in El Salvador, and a fast push to increase U.S. detention capability — first with tents, and, as just lately reported, into industrial warehouses as effectively.
These intensified enforcement efforts have led to record-setting numbers of individuals in immigration detention — about 73,000 as of this week — and to sustained media protection and public outcry.
However at the same time as immigration actions have dominated the highlight, the administration has additionally moved rapidly in different areas of the felony justice panorama.
Nowhere has that been extra obvious than on the Justice Division, the place beneath President Donald Trump and Legal professional Normal Pam Bondi, the division has seen considered one of its most tumultuous durations in trendy historical past. Earlier this week, authorized analyst Chris Geidner known as the “destruction” of the division over the previous yr “onerous to overstate.” Over 6,400 workers (out of about 108,000) have left, with tons of presumably fired for having labored on investigations that Trump thought of illegitimate, together with probes into the rioters on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and inquiries into felony conduct by Trump throughout his first time period.
The exodus has hit divisions throughout the Justice Division, together with profession nationwide safety and counterterrorism prosecutors, in addition to the part that handles delicate public corruption instances. However the mind drain has been particularly pronounced on the Civil Rights Division. As of August 2025, about three-quarters of the attorneys there had both resigned or been fired, in accordance with Bloomberg Information. Many left because the division turned towards its historic activity of addressing discrimination towards marginalized teams, and as an alternative, urged its attorneys to pursue instances towards what Bondi described as unlawful Range, Fairness and Inclusion mandates.
Not solely has the division deserted a lot of its conventional remit, like investigating native police departments for civil rights abuses, it has additionally taken on new, unfamiliar work, like a Second Modification unit targeted on “increasing gun rights.”
In response to criticism of this new route, a Justice Division spokesperson mentioned that Bondi and Civil Rights division chief Harmeet Dhillon have helped restore the division to its “unique mission” of defending the rights of all People. It’s value noting that Congress created the division as a part of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, aimed toward combating racist Jim Crow segregation and disenfranchisement.
The primary yr of the administration has additionally been characterised by retreat from the Justice Division’s historic pledge of independence from the White Home. Bondi issued a “zealous advocacy” memo practically a yr in the past, declaring in essence that the division attorneys are, the truth is, Trump’s attorneys. Since then, lots of the division’s most seen strikes have been in service to Trump’s political conflicts as a lot as to conventional enforcement priorities. A rising checklist of the president’s antagonists, together with former FBI Director James Comey, New York Legal professional Normal Letitia James and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, have discovered themselves beneath investigation or indictment. In a number of of these instances, courts have thrown out expenses or issued sharp rebukes of DOJ habits.
A minimum of one federal choose has additionally taken purpose on the division’s determination to chop greater than half a billion {dollars} in Workplace of Justice Packages grants. The cash had been allotted to native governments, regulation enforcement businesses and nonprofits for every thing from police coaching and gear, to providers for crime victims, group violence interruption applications and justice analysis. U.S. District Choose Amit Mehta known as the cuts ‘shameful,’ at the same time as he dominated challengers have been within the fallacious courtroom to attempt to cease it.
The Justice Division defended the cuts by arguing the awards now not match division priorities, alongside broader cost-cutting efforts.
My colleagues Sophia Nabours and Geoff Hing discovered that the cancellations created quick disruptions for recipients who needed to pause or cut back work, depart positions open, or lay off workers. In Shreveport, Louisiana, a victim-support nonprofit known as Mothers on a Mission, which works to assist victims of gun violence, described having to tug again on trauma counseling and grief assist teams after the cuts.
Equally, Daphne Duret and I discovered how the cuts affected a program in rural Alabama that paired sheriff’s deputies with psychological well being professionals when responding to sure calls. The cuts led to workers departures, and compelled officers again to dealing with psychological well being calls alone.
The consequences of funding cuts for analysis transcend what occurs at a person division or company. The Brennan Middle, a liberal-leaning criminal-justice suppose tank, famous that ending analysis “make[s] it tougher for policymakers of all political stripes to repair shared issues.”
Some additionally fear that the cuts could imperil a few of the dramatic decreases in crime charges the nation has seen over current years. In locations like Baltimore, native officers have straight tied improved crime charges to nonprofit work that was lower after DOJ grants have been eradicated.
Then there’s clemency, essentially the most direct presidential software within the felony justice system. Trump started his second time period with an unprecedented mass pardon masking roughly 1,500 individuals charged or convicted of crimes associated to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. Since then, the White Home has continued to make use of clemency energy in ways in which depart from the Justice Division’s conventional assessment course of — a shift underscored by the administration’s dismissal of pardon legal professional Liz Oyer, after she declined to fast-track a pardon for actor Mel Gibson, a private buddy of the president. Oyer has since written that Trump is making a “mockery” of the clemency course of.
The White Home has typically defended its pardons as a result of recipients have been “overprosecuted by a weaponized DOJ” beneath then-President Joe Biden.
The end result has led to an off-the-cuff course of that permits rich and politically related individuals to skip the road, reported The Wall Road Journal. The president’s clemency docket now has a hanging look of quid professional quo patronage. In a number of high-profile instances, Trump has granted pardons instantly after the recipient (or their shut family members) poured cash into Trump-aligned political committees. In a single attribute instance, Trump pardoned former nursing dwelling government Paul Walczak of tax crimes simply weeks after Walczak’s mom attended a $1 million-per-seat fundraiser at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
As a result of Trump’s clemency efforts have been targeted on rich individuals convicted of white-collar crimes, he has additionally erased a historic quantity of restitution owed to crime victims and fines owed to the U.S. authorities. This week, NBC Information reported that Trump’s year-one pardons worn out practically $300 million owed by individuals convicted of crimes. By comparability, over the 12 years of the Obama and Biden administrations, simply over $3 million in restitution and fines have been eradicated.
However whereas Trump has used clemency aggressively for a choose set of well-connected recipients, the broader thrust of the administration’s felony justice agenda has been towards harsher — and in some instances — extra violent punishment.
The Trump Justice Division signaled early in his second time period that it might lean again into the federal dying penalty, after authoring an execution spree late in his first time period. In between the 2 Trump presidencies, Biden commuted practically all federal dying sentences, leaving Trump with out a lengthy checklist of prisoners awaiting execution. In response, the administration is now pushing a number of states to file expenses towards those self same individuals, which might result in executions beneath the authority of state legal guidelines as an alternative.
Trump additionally embraced a de facto dying penalty for some individuals accused of overseas drug trafficking, backing a marketing campaign of deadly army strikes on suspected “drug boats” in worldwide waters — a pointy departure from the longstanding coverage of interdiction, arrest and trial for alleged narco traffickers. Final month, in the same vein, Trump signed an government order designating illicit fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction,” arguing it’s “nearer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic.” This week, Trump mentioned the administration will quickly start focusing on drug trafficking by land as effectively.
