The judge wants sworn statements from the Justice Department in the deportation case
The status of immigration enforcement in the wake of the recent deportations of Venezuelan citizens and alleged violations of the Alien Enemies Act
In a court filing on Tuesday, lawyers for the Justice Department complied, providing a sworn declaration from Robert Cerna, a top official at the U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement field office in Harlingen, Texas, where the deportation flights originated.
But in the last several days, Judge Boasberg and his court have been drawn into a battle with the Trump administration over immigration enforcement that threatens, more than anything to date, to pitch the branches of government into a constitutional crisis.
Over the weekend, the Trump administration sent three planes carrying 238 migrants from Venezuela to El Salvador, even as Judge Boasberg ordered a halt to the deportations and to turn the planes around. Mr. Trump had invoked the Alien Enemies Act in order to expel the migrants, which gave him the power to do so with any foreign nation that is at war or in the process of an invasion. Mr. Trump’s order justified the deportations by accusing the migrants of being members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that he charged with “conducting irregular warfare against the territory of the United States both directly and at the direction, clandestine or otherwise,” of President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela.
Gelernt also questioned whether the hundreds of Venezuelan men deported to El Salvador were in fact members of Tren de Aragua or other gangs, as the Trump administration has alleged.
Government lawyers on Sunday wrote that “some gang members subject to removal under the Proclamation had already been removed from United States territory” by the time the judge issued his written order at 7:26 p.m. ET on Saturday.
“Our lawyers are going to ask and answer those questions in court about whether verbal orders carry the same weight as written orders”, said the White House press secretary on Monday. The data show the two flights carrying the deportees were still in the air after the judge’s written order. The third plane took off at 7:37 pm after the written order was released.
Regardless of which time is used, the groups wrote in the filing, the government may have violated the court’s command. They said that the U.S. government retained custody of people until the planes landed and they were turned over to El Salvador — and that it didn’t matter whether the plane was over international waters or not.
The Justice Department vs. the Trump Administration: a U.S. Supreme Court Judge Should Be Impeached Before I’m Born Again
The judge, who was appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was the subject of a post by Trump on his Truth Social platform. Trump didn’t mention that person by name. But said that “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge is pushing the Trump administration for more details about weekend flights that deported hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members, despite his order to turn the planes around.
The legal back-and-forth comes amid escalating tensions between the White House and judiciary, as President Trump called for the removal of the judge overseeing the case.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” the court said in a statement from Roberts. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Lawyers for the Justice Department did not answer questions about when the deportation flights took off and who was on the planes at a hearing on Monday.
The Justice Department lawyers insisted that the judge had no right to try and get more information about the deportation flights before he wrote his order.
On Saturday, three deportation flights left the U.S. for El Salvador, a day after President Donald Trump invoked the rarely used authority of the Alien Enemies Act to detain and deport nationals of an enemy nation.
The Alien Enemies Act was used to detain 31,000 people, mostly of Japanese, Italian and German ancestry, during World War II.
The statute was clear that it can only be used against a foreign government. It has never in our country’s history been used during peacetime, much less against a gang,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s lead attorney on the case, in an interview with NPR.
In a court filing late Monday night, the Trump administration insisted it had good reason to believe that the men deported to El Salvador over the weekend are gang members.
Agency personnel carefully vetting each individual alien to make sure they were actually members of the team, according to the declaration. “ICE did not rely on social media, photographs of the alien, or tattoos alone.”
Cerna also conceded that “many” of those Venezuelan men who are now being held in a supermax prison in El Salvador do not have criminal records in the U.S. “They only have a short time in the United States and that’s why they’re not seen a lot,” Cerna said.
“The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat,” according to Cerna’s declaration. “The lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose. The fact they are terrorists with regard to whom we don’t lack a complete profile shows that they are.