By Luc Cohen
(Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration faced a deadline on Thursday to respond to a judicial request for more details on the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants as the judge considers whether officials violated his order temporarily blocking the expulsions.
Washington-based U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has given 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.
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.
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.
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 a court filing late on Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union – which brought the challenge to the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act – noted that the administration has acknowledged that many of the alleged gang members who were deported do not have U.S. criminal records. The ACLU also said Trump lacked a basis for invoking the 18th century law.
“The invocation of the act against a criminal gang cannot be squared with the explicit terms of the statute requiring a declared war or invasion by a foreign government or nation,” the ACLU wrote.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Will Dunham)
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