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... "Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done," he wrote. "This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear."

Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee who has been on the bench for 41 years, is one of the nation's most prominent conservative appellate judges.

His seven-page opinion is the latest -- and most scorching -- judicial rebuke of the Trump administration's aggressive moves to sidestep court orders in high-profile immigration cases. ...

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... Wilkinson warned of a dangerously slippery slope on the horizon. "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?" he wrote.

"And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?"

And he chided the administration broadly for its contemptuous attitude toward the judiciary, noting its calls for the impeachment of judges and "exhortations to disregard" court orders.

In this environment, he wrote, the executive and judiciary branches are coming "too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around." ...

... The administration is "asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order," wrote Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson in an opinion for a panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. ...

Due process.

Guaranteed by the Constitution.