In a bold move to rein in the activist judiciary, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice has filed an unprecedented lawsuit targeting all 15 federal district judges in Maryland over a controversial order that halts deportations for 48 hours whenever a habeas corpus petition is filed.

The lawsuit, spearheaded by Attorney General Pam Bondi, directly challenges what the DOJ is calling an “unlawful, antidemocratic” interference in the Executive Branch’s constitutional authority over immigration enforcement.

At the heart of the case is a sweeping standing order issued in May by U.S. District Chief Judge George L. Russell III, who declared that any detainee in Maryland filing a habeas petition must be granted a two-day pause before deportation.

The Trump administration isn’t having it.

“A sense of frustration and a desire for greater convenience do not give Defendants license to flout the law,” the DOJ stated in its filing, slamming the judiciary’s attempt to undermine the rule of law under the guise of administrative backlog.

Chief Judge Russell justified the order by claiming that weekend and after-hours filings had made it difficult for judges to keep up with the volume of cases and had created “frustrating” conditions in court. Translation: the courts are inconvenienced by the consequences of their own open-border rulings, so now they want to tie the administration’s hands.

A DOJ spokesperson didn’t mince words on social media, writing on X:

“This is just the latest action by @AGPamBondi’s DOJ to rein in unlawful judicial overreach.”

The legal showdown highlights growing tensions between President Donald J. Trump’s administration and a judiciary that has repeatedly acted as a partisan counterweight to lawful executive action.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, told the Washington Post that the lawsuit is “mind-boggling,” but even he admitted that the Trump administration raises “legitimate legal arguments.” He called the effort “performative,” but critics say the real performance has come from federal judges pretending to be immigration czars.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Bondi continues to raise alarm over judicial bias—especially in high-profile cases targeting the administration.

Earlier this week, Bondi condemned the selection of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to oversee a lawsuit stemming from the now-infamous Signal group chat leak — calling his assignment a “wild coincidence” that consistently works against President Trump and his officials.

The Signal controversy, which involved a private military discussion between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, and others, exploded after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly included in the conversation and leaked its contents. The fallout led to the dismissal of National Security Adviser Mike Walz.

Judge Boasberg has a well-documented track record of anti-Trump rulings. In one outrageous case, he ordered deportation planes carrying Venezuelan gang members — already in international airspace — to turn around and return to the U.S. When that didn’t happen, he tried to hold Trump officials in contempt of court. That ruling is now under appeal.

Bondi is done playing nice.

“He shouldn’t be on any of these cases. He cannot be objective. He’s made that crystal clear,” she said of Boasberg, who is now mysteriously presiding over four separate lawsuits targeting the second Trump administration — despite federal guidelines that supposedly assign judges at random.

The DOJ lawsuit against the entire Maryland bench sends a clear message: under President Trump, the Executive Branch will no longer tolerate activist judges who use procedural trickery to sabotage lawful immigration enforcement.

With judicial interference at an all-time high, this may be the legal push conservatives have long demanded — to reestablish constitutional boundaries and remind the courts that they are not above the law.