Attorney General Pam Bondi has invoked state secrets privilege in response to a probe from Judge James Boasberg into deportation flights of Tren de Aragau and MS-13 gang members to El Salvador earlier in March.
As Breitbart News reported, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to begin deporting hundreds of illegal alien gang members with Tren de Aragua and the MS-13 gangs, both of which are now designated as terrorist organizations.
The left-wing American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Soros-linked Democracy Forward sued the Trump administration to stop the deportations on behalf of five illegal aliens accused of being gang members, though two planes of nearly 300 gang members had already taken off for El Salvador.
Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order blocking Trump from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport illegal alien gang members. Trump officials said they got the order from Boasberg when the gang members had already landed in El Salvador.
Since then, Boasberg has asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) for details such as the number of gang members on each flight, when the flights took off from the United States, when they landed in El Salvador, and when the men were handed over to Salvadoran officials.
This weekBondi sent Boasberg a “notice invoking state secrets privilege” regarding the details of the deportation flights.
“The Executive Branch hereby notifies the Court that no further information will be provided in response to the Court’s March 18, 2025 Minute Order based on the state secrets privilege and the concurrently filed declarations of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security,” Bondi wrote:
This is a case about the President’s plenary authority, derived from Article II and the mandate of the electorate, and reinforced by longstanding statute, to remove from the homeland designated terrorists participating in a state-sponsored invasion of, and predatory incursion into, the United States. The Court has all of the facts it needs to address the compliance issues before it. Further intrusions on the Executive Branch would present dangerous and wholly unwarranted separation-of-powers harms with respect to diplomatic and national security concerns that the Court lacks competence to address. Accordingly, the states secrets privilege forecloses further demands for details that have no place in this matter, and the government will address the Court’s order to show cause tomorrow by demonstrating that there is no basis for the suggestion of noncompliance with any binding order. [Emphasis added]
…
For the foregoing reasons, the government invokes the state secrets privilege and declines to further respond to the Court’s March 18, 2025 Minute Order. [Emphasis added]
Trump and Republicans in Congress have made clear their disdain for Boasberg’s temporary restraining order that blocks the administration from deporting gang members through the Alien Enemies Act.
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) last week filed Articles of Impeachment against Boasberg and this week Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) filed legislation to ban federal judges from issuing nationwide injunctions.
“The purpose of Judge Boasberg’s unconstitutional ruling is to tie up President Trump’s time and resources in litigation, stopping him from executing on the democratic mandate voters gave him,” Gill wrote. “The ruling is a fundamental attack on our democratic system.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
