On Thursday, President Donald Trump’s administration faced a deadline to provide more information regarding the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants. The judge is currently evaluating whether officials violated his order that temporarily halted the expulsions.
Washington-based U.S. District Judge James Boasberg gave the administration until noon (1600 GMT) to either provide specifics on when the deportation flights took off and landed so he can determine whether they violated his order, or to invoke a legal doctrine involving state secrets to avoid sharing those details and explain their reasons for doing so.
There was no indication on the public docket as of 12:15 p.m. EDT (1615 GMT) that the administration had submitted a response. Neither the Justice Department nor Boasberg’s chambers immediately responded to requests for comment.
Boasberg gave the Justice Department the option of giving him the flight details under seal, meaning they would not be made public. But the judge expressed skepticism that the state secrets doctrine – which protects sensitive national security information from being disclosed in civil litigation – was applicable, given that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted details of the flights on social media.
Looming Constitutional Crisis
The dispute between the judge and the Republican president’s administration came to a head on Tuesday when Trump called for Boasberg’s impeachment by Congress – a process that could remove him from the bench – drawing a rare rebuke from the U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts.
“I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do. This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump wrote on Tuesday, also calling Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic.”
Trump has said he would not defy any court orders.
The episode has raised concerns among Trump critics and some legal experts about a potentially looming constitutional crisis if his administration defies judicial decisions. Under the U.S. Constitution, the executive and the judiciary are co-equal branches of government.
Potential Consequences
Boasberg, who was confirmed to the federal bench in 2011 by a 96-0 bipartisan vote in the U.S. Senate, has warned of potential consequences if he finds the administration violated his order, but has not specified those consequences.
On Saturday, the judge imposed a two-week ban on any deportations under Trump’s invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Trump said the law allowed him to deport alleged members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua without final removal orders from immigration judges. Boasberg found that the law did not provide a basis for the president to assert that the gang’s presence in the United States was akin to an act of war.
After Boasberg’s order hit the public docket at 7:25 p.m. EDT (2325 GMT) on Saturday, three plane loads of deportees landed in El Salvador, where the migrants are being held under an agreement with Trump-aligned President Nayib Bukele’s government.
In court filings late on Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union – which brought the challenge to the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act – cited five cases of Venezuelan migrants whose attorneys or a family member argued they were wrongly labeled as gang members before apparently being deported to El Salvador.
One of the deportees was Jerce Reyes Barrios, a Venezuelan professional soccer player and youth coach with an active U.S. asylum case. In a sworn declaration, his attorney said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had wrongly labeled him a gang member based on a tattoo of a crown that was meant to reference the logo for his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid.
(With inputs from Reuters)
