President Donald Trump’s administration may have acted in “bad faith” and violated a court order with its deportation last month of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador, a US judge said Thursday.
District Judge James Boasberg has issued a temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from using an obscure wartime law to carry out rapid deportations.
The federal judge held a hearing in a Washington courtroom Thursday to determine whether the government had complied with his orders or should be held in contempt.
Trump’s administration has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court’s order and allow for a resumption of the deportation flights under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA), which has only been used previously during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.
In invoking the act, Trump said he was targeting transnational gangs he had declared foreign terrorist organizations, including the Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua.
But attorneys for several of the deported Venezuelans have said that their clients were not Tren de Aragua members, had committed no crimes and were targeted largely on the basis of their tattoos.
On March 15, Boasberg ordered a halt to deportation flights under the wartime act, as two planes were headed to El Salvador. He also ordered that the planes be turned around, but they were not.
The Alien Enemies Act was invoked on March 14 but not made public until the next day — when the deportations were already well underway — and Boasberg said at the hearing that this was an indication the administration may have “acted in bad faith.”
“If you really believed everything you did that day was legal and would survive a court challenge, you wouldn’t have operated the way you did,” the judge told Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign.
Boasberg peppered Ensign with questions as he sought to determine whether a contempt finding was warranted.
The judge said the Justice Department was aware he had called a hearing for 5:00 pm on March 15 to consider a lawsuit filed by rights groups seeking to halt the deportations.
“Why wouldn’t the prudent thing be to say — ‘Let’s slow down here and see what the judge has to say?'” Boasberg asked.
Ensign replied that he was not privy to the “operational details” of the deportations.
The Justice Department has said previously that the planes were already en route to El Salvador and in international airspace when the judge issued his written order asking that they be turned around.
The Trump administration has used images of the alleged gang members being shackled and having their heads shaved in the Central American prison as proof it is serious about cracking down on illegal immigration.
In its appeal to the Supreme Court, acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris described the case as a key test of presidential authority over the courts.
