'I've Never Read Anything Like This': CNN Reporter Spots Judge's Blunt 'Warning' To Trump

CNN’s Katelyn Polantz on Friday highlighted a federal judge’s sharp warning to the Trump administration this week as officials defy a Supreme Court order regarding the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States.

“I’ve never read anything like this from an appeals court before,” said Polantz, CNN’s crime and justice correspondent.

Her remarks come after Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson — a conservative appointed by Ronald Reagan to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — ripped the Trump administration’s hopes of appealing a court order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return after the Maryland father of three was deported to a Salvadoran prison.

Polantz said the court sees the Trump administration “doing nothing” to facilitate the man’s return and finds officials’ behavior to be a sign of the “crumbling of American democracy.”

Polantz then read from Wilkinson’s blistering order on the case where he urged the Trump administration to follow the Constitution in a way that — as she put it — “preserves American democracy before it is too late.”

“If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?” the judge wrote. “And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?”

Polantz summed up the judge’s fierce rebuke of the Trump administration.

“This is the starkest warning that we have ever seen really from a federal appellate court, a conservative judge, toward the executive branch today in this case, but much bigger issues at play,” she said.