TIMEDO, Washington D.C., United States — In a move that has sparked alarm among legal and civil rights circles, President Donald Trump has ordered sanctions against attorneys and law firms that file lawsuits challenging his administration’s immigration policies, claiming such actions promote “rampant fraud” within the U.S. legal system.
The directive was issued through a memorandum signed on Friday and released Saturday by the White House, instructing the Department of Justice to punish what the government considers abusive or improper litigation aimed at the federal government.
According to the document, both the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security must identify and sanction law firms filing «frivolous, unreasonable, or vexatious» lawsuits against the United States. Additionally, the president called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to submit the names of these attorneys to the White House, in order to revoke their credentials and terminate any active contracts with federal agencies.
The response was swift. Multiple civil rights organizations strongly rejected the measure, calling it an attempt to silence legal opposition to his policies. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) condemned the order as “an unprecedented attack on democracy and the rule of law,” according to the group’s legal director, Cecillia Wang.
Currently, more than a hundred federal lawsuits are challenging immigration measures enforced by the Trump administration, including a recent court ruling that blocked the attempt to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants or those with temporary visas.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has heavily relied on executive orders to advance his immigration agenda, testing the limits of the judicial system and expanding executive control over immigration policy, often at the expense of institutional checks and balances.