Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks alongside President Donald Trump on recent Supreme Court rulings in the briefing room at the White House. (Getty Images)
Instead, the ruling focused narrowly on whether the inmates were given a real opportunity to contest the transfer, which Kelly said they were not. The order is a temporary blow to the Trump administration's effort to counter sweeping clemency actions Biden took during his final month in office — moves critics described as a political "Hail Mary" that lacked proper vetting.
"The Constitution requires that whenever the government seeks to deprive a person of a liberty or property interest that the Due Process Clause protects — whether that person is a notorious prisoner or a law-abiding citizen — the process it provides cannot be a sham," Kelly said.
Next steps in the case were not immediately clear, and the Justice Department declined to respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment on whether it would seek to appeal the ruling.
The effort comes as Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Trump administration have sought to reverse Biden's sweeping clemency actions, including the commutations of 37 death row inmates, many of whom have been convicted of particularly heinous and violent crimes.
One individual was convicted of murdering a married couple who were camping in the Ouachita National Forest in July 2003.
Another was convicted of kidnapping, robbing, and murdering a 51-year-old local bank president by tying him to a concrete block and chain hoist, and tossing him off of a bridge and into a lake.
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The ADX Supermax Prison in Florence, Colorado is a state of the art isolation prison for repeat and high profile felony offenders. (Photo by Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Sygma via Getty Images) (Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Sygma via Getty Images)
Among them are Ramzi Yousef, convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers; former Sinola Cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán, or "El Chapo"; and Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the co-founder of al-Qaeda.
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Though a commutation cannot be fully reversed, Justice Department officials told Fox News Digital, Bondi has prioritized ways to penalize these individuals, in coordination with directives from Trump, and to ensure that the "conditions of confinement" are "consistent with the security risks those inmates present because of their egregious crimes, criminal histories, and all other relevant considerations," according to an earlier DOJ memo.
Breanne Deppisch is a national politics reporter for Fox News Digital covering the Trump administration, with a focus on the Justice Department, FBI and other national news. She previously covered national politics at the Washington Examiner and The Washington Post, with additional bylines in Politico Magazine, the Colorado Gazette and others. You can send tips to Breanne at Breanne.Deppisch@fox.com, or follow her on X at @breanne_dep.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/federal-judge-blocks-trump-bid-move-biden-commuted-death-row-inmates-alcatraz-rockies