The Trump administration is courting controversy after defying a judge’s order to halt the deportation of alleged Venezuelan criminals, and Rich questions his co-panelists about the ins and outs of the judicial furor on today’s edition of The Editors.

“I really don’t understand,” Charlie says, “the outrage from the right that a judge has involved himself in this area, or the astonishment that this could be illegal. . . . I just don’t see how we can avoid or why we would want to avoid judicial oversight.”

He explains to listeners that “you’ve got two statutory questions, and you’ve got one constitutional question. Now, I’m not going to pretend that I have the answers to those. I do think it’s complicated. But given that we need an answer to them, how are we going to get one? You go to a judge.

“I have no brief for the people if they are indeed guilty of what they have been accused of. I have no problem with the federal government deporting illegal immigrants or criminals who are here without citizenship. And I think that in many, many cases, the courts have behaved badly with the Trump administration. But I do not see how you can address the questions at stake here without asking judges to intervene.”

Jim points out that “at the heart of the administration’s argument, there’s contradiction. . . . On the one hand, it’s so self-evident that these guys are gang members, that they are terrorists, that they are threats to other Americans, that they absolutely need to be put on the plane as quickly as possible. No one could possibly dispute this. It is the most clear and self-evident fact ever. But somehow we don’t have time to prove this in court.

“Asking the government to prove criminal charges doesn’t seem like a lot to ask. It seems actually kind of fundamental to how we set up our government.”

The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.