The courts have not been defeated. They have been bypassed. In 1933, this distinction did not matter. There is no evidence it matters now.
A federal judge wrote Sunday that the Trump administration is attempting to “coerce perpetual, infinite detention” by defying court orders. Three hundred forty-seven district court judges have ruled against the administration’s detention policies. Twenty have ruled in favor.
Does a 95% win ratio sound good? It’s not enough, in a system designed to operate faster than judicial review. It is documentation of abuse, executive power operating without check.
The win ratio is both damning and the kind of success that failed to stop Hitler.
This requires explanation.
The Schutzhaft Mechanism
On February 28, 1933, Germany’s Reichstag Fire Decree suspended constitutional protections including habeas corpus. The decree enabled Schutzhaft (“protective custody”): administrative detention without judicial warrant or review. As the infamous saying went:
If you cannot recognise the will of the Fuhrer as a source of law, then you cannot remain a judge
Schutzhaft had three structural features:
- Administrative classification. Detention was ordered by police, not courts. No judicial finding was required.
- Speed. Detainees were moved to camps before legal challenges could be filed. Within two months, 25,000 people were detained in Prussia alone.
- Parallel track. Regular courts continued to function for ordinary matters. Schutzhaft operated outside their jurisdiction entirely.
German courts were not abolished, packed, or corrupted. They became irrelevant to the detention system. Judges continued to rule. The camps continued to fill. These two facts did not contradict each other.
The Trump Version
The American detention apparatus today shares the exact same three features.
- Administrative classification. In July 2025, DHS issued an internal memo reinterpreting existing law to classify most undocumented immigrants as “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention. No legislation. No judicial approval. A memo.
- Speed. The administration provides detainees 12-24 hours to express intent to challenge detention. Physical removal frequently occurs before judicial review. When Judge Boasberg issued a restraining order halting deportation flights to El Salvador, the planes had already departed. The detainees are now in CECOT prison. DHS officials transfer Minnesota detainees to Texas within days of arrest, removing them from the jurisdiction of Minnesota courts before cases can be heard.
- Parallel track. Immigration courts are executive branch entities under the Department of Justice, not Article III courts. The administration has fired immigration judges and is replacing them with military lawyers. Cases pending in immigration court are dismissed; detainees are immediately re-arrested and placed in expedited removal, an administrative process with minimal judicial oversight.
The Relevant Numbers
District court rulings on detention policy: 347 against the administration, 20 in favor.
Supreme Court emergency stays of district court orders: 17 granted to the administration, 1 denied.
ICE detainees as of December 2025: 66,000, a record.
Deaths in ICE custody, fiscal year 2025: 23. Previous four years combined: 24.
The Logic
District courts rule against detention policy. The administration appeals. The Supreme Court grants emergency stays. Policy continues during appeal. Appeals take months. Deportations take days.
The 347 district court rulings create a record yet do not prevent detention. The detainees those rulings concern have frequently been transferred out of jurisdiction or removed from the country before the ruling issues.
A system in which courts rule correctly but after the fact is a system in which executive action goes unconstrained.
The Nazi Schutzhaft of 1933 is the entire Trump bypass story of 2026.
Judge Davis, in his Sunday ruling, identified the mechanism: the administration is “stretch[ing] the legal process to the breaking point in an attempt to deny noncitizens their due process rights.”
Stretching the process to the breaking point is not the same as violating the process. The process continues. The detentions will ramp even faster.
The 2026 Reality
The German legal profession in 1933 observed that courts were still functioning. This was true. Cases were heard. Rulings were issued. The Schutzhaft system was not subject to those rulings. We know how the concentration camps evolved after that.
The question is not whether American courts are ruling correctly. They are. The question is whether those rulings have any hope of constraining the American detention system tomorrow if not today.
Current evidence, based on Nazi history, indicates they do not.