U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at the White House on Marine One from Camp David, in Washington, U.S., June 9, 2025. / Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein

President Donald Trump's administration is escalating its battle with the U.S. judiciary over rulings that have stymied his agenda by filing a lawsuit with an unusual set of defendants: The judges themselves.

The Justice Department late on June 24 sued the federal court in Maryland and all 15 of its judges over an order last month that automatically blocks for two business days the deportation of migrants in the state who file a new lawsuit challenging their detention. The court is formally called the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. 

The administration's lawsuit, filed in Baltimore, argues that the standing order runs afoul of U.S. Supreme Court precedent governing the standards for how courts can issue injunctions and flouts congressional intent.

The Justice Department in its lawsuit said the order was an "egregious example of judicial overreach," following a series of injunctions in lawsuits that have prevented the Trump administration from fully executing the Republican president's policies.

"The American people elected President Trump to carry out his policy agenda: this pattern of judicial overreach undermines the democratic process and cannot be allowed to stand," U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.

Legal experts called the Justice Department's lawsuit surprising. Normally to challenge a trial court's order, a litigant would do so in a case in which it arose or by asking an appeals court to set the order aside.

"It is a shocking move by the Justice Department that is simply unprecedented," said Marin Levy, a professor at Duke University School of Law. "And it seems like part of a strategic attempt to attack the courts rather than any sort of good faith litigation."

The Justice Department is seeking a court ruling declaring the order to be unlawful and an injunction blocking the judges from enforcing it. The department asked that the Maryland federal judges recuse themselves from hearing the case and instead have a federal judge from another state hear it.

Judicial officials declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The order at issue cited a "recent influx of habeas petitions concerning alien detainees purportedly subject to improper and imminent removal from the United States." A habeas petition is a legal action challenging the legality of a person's detention.

The two-day automatic pause on deportations being carried out as part of the Republican president's hardline approach toward immigration was designed to ensure that migrants are not removed from Maryland before their cases could be reviewed.

The order was signed by Chief U.S. District Judge George Russell, who like the majority of the judges in the Maryland court was appointed by a Democratic president.

The court issued the order after months of litigation in Maryland over the Trump administration's deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador despite a 2019 immigration court ruling that he not be sent there because he could be persecuted by gangs. Abrego is a Salvadoran national who lived in Maryland. His wife and young son are American citizens.

That case led to weeks of questions about whether the administration would abide by an order by a federal judge in Maryland that it help "facilitate" Abrego's return. He was deported on March 15 and was returned on June 6.

The standing order said cases by detained migrants sometimes were being filed in the evenings or on weekends and holidays, resulting in "hurried and frustrating hearings" in which obtaining clear information about the location and status of the migrant detainees at issue had been "elusive."

The Justice Department called the order the latest example of what it said was an unprecedented number of injunctions issued by judges nationally blocking administration policies. The judges issuing these orders have done so after finding various actions by Trump and his administration to be unlawful.

"Every unlawful order entered by the district courts robs the Executive Branch of its most scarce resource: time to put its policies into effect," the Justice Department stated in the lawsuit. "In the process, such orders diminish the votes of the citizens who elected the head of the Executive Branch."

Abrego was brought back only after the Justice Department charged him with migrant smuggling. He has pleaded not guilty. A federal judge in Tennessee on Wednesday said she would order his release from pre-trial custody without posting bail but acknowledged he likely would be taken into immigration custody.