Fifth Circuit Trump Judge James Ho made his unflagging loyalty to Donald Trump all the more clear in a concurrence to, of all things, a simple scheduling order. The May 2025 order came in the case of A.A.R.P. v. Trump.
This is the latest stage in a case involving Trump’s lawless efforts to abuse a wartime power when there isn’t a war. His collaborators in the administration have declared with little to no reliable evidence that a number of U.S. residents from Venezuela are gang members who commit crimes on orders from the Venezuelan government. With that designation, the administration has sent them to prison in another country without giving them a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves.
Last week, the Supreme Court blocked the administration from carrying out further deportations from a district in Texas. Events on the ground were moving quickly, and people feared rushed deportations were being intentionally carried out too quickly for a judge to stop them. Officials had been giving their targets only 24 hours’ notice and no information about how to exercise their legal right to due process.
With buses to the airport already loaded, detained individuals sought quick action from a federal district court. When the court did not issue a ruling, they appealed to the Fifth Circuit. While this was transpiring, the Supreme Court issued an extraordinary midnight ruling barring deportations from the Northern District while the Fifth Circuit considered the appeal. A three-judge circuit panel then concluded that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the case.
The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, which last week vacated the Fifth Circuit order and determined that it did have jurisdiction to consider the appeal. The 7-2 Supreme Court order held that the administration’s procedures do “not pass muster” for constitutional due process. And the justices sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit to “expeditiously” rule on the appeal and consider what does constitutes sufficient due process in the current situation.
So yesterday, a panel of the Fifth Circuit issued a three-sentence order directing that the case be expedited to the next available three-judge oral-argument panel.
James Ho, who was on the panel, chose to write a concurrence to this simple order. He condemned “disrespect” for Donald Trump.
I write to state my sincere concerns about how the district judge as well as the President and other officials have been treated in this case. I worry that the disrespect they have been shown will not inspire continued respect for the judiciary, without which we cannot long function.
For James Ho, Trump and those who help him are clearly the real victims here. That would come as news to people being sent to foreign prisons without due process, as well as the many others still in the U.S. and desperately seeking judicial action to protect them from the same abuse of power.
Ho disagreed with the Supreme Court that the Fifth Circuit had jurisdiction to hear the case. In explaining that courts only hear cases that they have jurisdiction to consider, he made the following ominous statement:
It is not the role of the judiciary to check the excesses of the other branches …
In fact, that is one of its most important functions, which it carries out through hearing lawsuits. The judiciary is an integral part of the system of constitutional checks and balances on government power.
This is not the first time Ho has gone out of his way to signal his loyalty to Trump. This makes him a potential selection for the next vacancy on the Supreme Court. In an administration that prizes loyalty to Trump over the rule of law, Ho would seem to be a likely pick.