There is a “fair likelihood” the Trump administration violated a court order temporarily blocking the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members under a rarely invoked 18th-century law, a U.S. judge said on Thursday.
Washington-based U.S. District Judge James Boasberg made the comment at a hearing over whether the government violated his order.
Boasberg on March 15 imposed a two-week ban on deportations of accused members of the Tren de Aragua gang under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, while he considered a lawsuit brought by some Venezuelan migrants challenging the legality of the law’s use to speed up their removal.
Boasberg is now probing whether Republican President Donald Trump’s administration violated that order by failing to return two deportation flights that were in the air at the time he issued the order. The Venezuelan migrants aboard the planes were handed over to officials in El Salvador, where they are being held.
The episode has prompted concerns among Democrats and some legal observers that the Trump administration may not comply with unfavorable court rulings. Trump called for Boasberg’s impeachment after he blocked the deportations. That prompted a rare rebuke from U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, who said appeals, not impeachments, were the proper response to disagreements with court orders.
The Trump administration says it did not violate Boasberg’s order. In a March 25 court filing, Justice Department lawyers wrote that the migrants had already been deported by the time the judge ruled because the planes had left U.S. airspace.
They also said Boasberg could not order the executive branch to bring the alleged members of Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration labels a terrorist organization, back from overseas.
“Courts lack authority to micromanage how the President decides to deal with terrorists abroad,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote.
The government has also invoked the state secrets privilege, a doctrine preventing sensitive government information from being disclosed in civil litigation, to avoid giving Boasberg more details about the timing of the flights.
Lawyers for the Venezuelan migrants said in a March 31 filing that Boasberg’s order was clearly intended to prevent them from being handed over to a foreign government, meaning the Trump administration violated it.
The migrants’ lawyers say they were not given a chance to contest the government’s assertion that they were Tren de Aragua members before being deported under the Alien Enemies Act. The law, best-known for its use to intern and remove Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants during World War Two, allows foreign nationals to be deported without final removal orders from immigration judges.
Immigration lawyers, family members and advocates said authorities are targeting young Venezuelan men who are not gang members on the mistaken belief that their tattoos honoring family members, their professions, and even soccer teams signify Tren de Aragua membership.
Boasberg on Friday extended his temporary restraining order for another two weeks, as lawyers for the migrants seek a longer-lasting preliminary injunction.
The Trump administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Boasberg’s initial order, after an appeals court upheld it.
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