The federal judge who blocked Donald Trump’s deportation flights under the foreign enemies Act appears surprised by arguments by advocates of the Justice Department who claims that his command of the bank can be ignored because it was not written down.
“You tell me that you felt that you could overlook it because it was not in the written order?” An incredible US district judge James Boasberg asked on Monday during a trial in Washington, DC.
Advocates for the Justice Department suggested it was the position of the Trump administration. He calls the government’s argument a ‘heckuva stretch’.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also made a similar argument as reporters during a briefing earlier Monday.
“There are actually questions about whether an oral order carries the same weight as a written order,” she claims.
The judge called a hearing to determine exactly what happened after three flights allegedly contained members of the Tren de Agua gang of Venezuela left the United States to El Salvador on Friday night, despite his oral – and written – orders that explicitly prevented them from starting.
A timeline is crucial to determine whether the administration openly defies the judicial branch, as critics fear that the president consolidates power in the executive branch and shredding checks and balances.
After Boasberg denied the request of the Trump administration to cancel Monday’s trial, the Justice Department asked a federal appeal court to remove the case “immediately” from Boasberg’s courtroom.
Katherine Yon Ebright of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School said on Monday about the Justice’s attempt to take away the case from Boasberg.
“Judge Boasberg is no liberal or national security law, skeptical; He is the former presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Supple Court, ”she wrote.
The immigrants on those flights are now being jailed in a notorious El Salvadoran prison. According to the White House, officials can prove that they are gang members based on ‘intelligence and men and women on the ground’, Leavitt told reporters on Monday.
“Their hands are tied under the previous administration … they have to be trusted and respected by the American public,” she said.
Judge Boasberg ordered attorneys to answer a series of flight questions, including, critical, what time they left the United States. But lawyers from the Justice Department have repeatedly refused to answer the inquiries.
The judge also wants to know how many people were deported exclusively based on Trump’s call from the Strange Enemies Act, the age-old war law that Trump applied for the fourth time in American history.
Attorneys have until noon Tuesday to answer.
Trump applies the strange enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezola’s “who are members” of Tren de Agua and “is not actually naturalized or legitimate permanent residents of the United States,” according to his command he called on last Friday.
The next day, the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit to strive a temporary restriction order to block the removal under the Act. Boasberg scheduled a short trial at 5pm and then adjourned 20 minutes later to allow the administration to determine whether flights that someone carries under the law were underway. The parties were back in court at 18:00
Then, at 17:26 o’clock, one of two flights charged by immigration and customs handling, Texas to Honduras, according to flight records reviewed by The Washington Post. Another flight followed at 17:45 to El Salvador.
About an hour later, the judge agreed to temporarily block the application of the Uien Enemies Act. His written command appears on the dossier at 19:26
A third flight left for Texas to El Salvador ten minutes later.
Sunday morning, at 7:47 pm – more than 12 hours after the command of the judge of the bank and his written verdict – El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele responded to the news about the judge’s verdict with a post on social media: ‘Openie.’
The message was shared by Foreign Minister Marco Rubio.
Trump’s border Czar Tom Homan suggested on Fox News that the administration did not “stop” its operations due to a court order.
“We don’t stop,” he told Fox News on Monday. “I don’t care what the judges think, I don’t care what the leftist thinks. We come. “
In court documents and in the courtroom, Justice Department officials claimed that answers to the questions of the judge involved sensitive national security issues.
“If you say,” it’s classified “and you can’t tell me, then you have to make a good performance,” the judge said. “Why do you appear today and do you have no answers about why you can’t disclose it?”
Advocate of the Department of Justice Abishek Kambli also argued that Judge Boasberg was “losing jurisdiction” that these aircraft were no longer in the US airspace.
“Once in the international waters, the president has authority outside the foreign enemies Act that would not have been subject to the order,” he said.
The judge was skeptical.
“You say that the president somehow has extra powers over an airplane as soon as it enters the international airspace as soon as it leaves our airspace?” He said.
The parties are back in court on Friday to protest the merits of Trump’s executive order.
Critics expressed alarm about the underlying decisions of the administration on the deportation flights and the attempts to remove Judge Boasberg from the case for questioning them.
“Trump is defending court orders and abusing war forces to deport people without any process,” Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote on X. “Donald Trump is not a king. He is not above the law. “
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the US Immigration Council called the position of the Justice Department ‘completely incoherent’.
“They say that even if they broke the order, Trump had inherent power as chief commander to direct military assets,” he wrote on X. “But it was charter aircraft running by a subsidiary of a private prison business on a contract with ICE.”
