In the appellate court order, Ho said his lower court would respect and follow the orders of the Supreme Court, but he defended his court’s previous ruling that lawyers for the migrants had not given the district judge who initially heard the case enough time to rule before seeking emergency relief from the appeals court above him.

Ho noted that the migrants’ lawyers had effectively given the district judge just 42 minutes to rule on their emergency request to block the Trump administration from deporting a group of migrants suspected of membership in the violent Tren de Aragua gang. The Supreme Court viewed that timeline differently, suggesting that the district judge had failed to rule on the emergency request for more than 14 hours by tracing the start of the saga back to when the migrant lawyers’ filed their initial request just after midnight on April 18, not when those lawyers informed the district judge around noon the next day that they would elevate their request to the appeals court if they did not receive a response in 42 minutes.

Either way, Ho said, neither the district judge nor the appeals court received enough time to rule on the request, and the Supreme Court should not have rewarded the migrants’ lawyers for abusing the emergency docket.

“We seem to have forgotten that this is a district court—not a Denny’s,” Ho wrote. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone suggest that district judges have a duty to check their dockets at all hours of the night, just in case a party decides to file a motion.”

The Trump-appointed appellate judge continued by suggesting that if courts were expected to be available at all times of the day, then “the Judicial Conference of the United States and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts should secure from Congress the resources and staffing necessary to ensure 24-hour operations in every district court across the country.

“If this is not to become the norm, then we should admit that this is special treatment being afforded to certain favored litigants like members of Tren de Aragua—and we should stop pretending that Lady Justice is blindfolded,” Ho wrote.

The high court’s Friday order specifically claimed that “the District Court’s inaction—not for 42 minutes but for 14 hours and 28 minutes—had the practical effect of refusing an injunction to detainees facing an imminent threat of severe, irreparable harm.”

The Supreme Court became involved in the case shortly after the group of Venezuelan nationals asked through their lawyers for a temporary restraining order to prevent their deportation. They asked a federal district court to intervene at 12:34 a.m. on April 18 and then again at 12:48 p.m. that day, requesting a ruling within 42 minutes because the district judge had not yet ruled. That was because, Ho noted, the district judge had previously agreed to give the Trump administration 24 hours to respond to any motion made by the lawyers for the migrants.

When 1:30 p.m. that day passed with no action by the district judge, the migrants’ legal team then asked the appeals court to rule, but the appeals court denied the request to intervene, citing a lack of jurisdiction due to the minimal time given to the district court. At 11:52 p.m., the Supreme Court granted the request to pause the deportations.

Ho defended the 5th Circuit’s ruling on April 18 that it did not have jurisdiction, noting that the 42-minute ultimatum the migrants’ lawyers gave the district court before appealing was “not remotely enough time to review and analyze all of the relevant legal authorities and prepare a reasoned ruling.” The federal appellate judge also noted the importance of hearing from both sides before the court makes a decision.

“Recall why the district court established a 24-hour filing deadline,” Ho said. “The court firmly believed that the Government should have the right to express its views before any ruling is issued. And rightly so.”

Ho then noted times when former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden had disparaged the Supreme Court, and former President Bill Clinton’s disbarment from practicing law before the high court, to argue that even those presidents deserved to express their views in a legal challenge before a decision was made.

“It should go without saying that the President and his fellow Executive Branch officials deserve the same respect that courts regularly afford every other litigant—including other Presidents and officials,” Ho said.

Ho, an appointee of Trump during his first term, has emerged in recent years as an influential figure in legal circles and is viewed as a top candidate to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court should one arise during the president’s second term. He is seen as an ideological heir apparent to Justice Clarence Thomas.

SUPREME COURT SO FAR FOCUSING ON PROCEDURE OVER SUBSTANCE IN IMMIGRATION CASES

Thomas joined a dissent to the Supreme Court’s Friday decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, who claimed that the high court had “no authority to issue any relief.”

“It has plucked a case from a district court and decided important issues in the first instance,” Alito wrote. “To my eyes, that looks far too much like an expansion of our original jurisdiction.”