When a federal judge shot down a Trump administration policy of holding immigrants without bond last December, it seemed like a serious blow to the US president’s mass deportation effort. Instead, a top justice department official insisted the ruling wasn’t binding, and the administration continued denying detainees around the country a chance for release. By February, the district court judge in question, Sunshine Sykes, was fed up. Sykes accused the Trump administration of terrorizing immigrants and recklessly violating the law in its efforts to deport millions of people. She also said she regarded it as seeking “to erode any semblance of separation of powers”, adding that it could “only do so in a world where the constitution does not exist”.…