The Trump administration has deported alleged members of a Venezuelan gang from the US despite a court order prohibiting the action, arguing that the judge lacked the authority to intervene.
The deportation followed Judge James Boasberg’s decision to block President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act’s wartime powers to swiftly remove over 200 alleged members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang linked to kidnapping, extortion, and contract killings.
“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft … full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from US soil,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. She asserted that the court had “no lawful basis” to intervene and that federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over a president’s handling of foreign affairs.
Patrick Eddington, a homeland security and civil liberties legal expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the administration’s actions amounted to “open defiance” of the judiciary. “This is beyond the pale and certainly unprecedented,” he said, calling it the most extreme test of the US Constitution’s system of checks and balances and judicial independence since the Civil War.
When asked if his administration had violated the court order, Trump deferred to legal counsel but defended the deportations. “I can tell you this: these were bad people,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.
In a Saturday evening hearing, Boasberg issued a 14-day injunction on the use of the law, stating that the statute applies to “hostile acts” by a foreign nation that are “commensurate to war.”
Trump defended his decision, equating the rise in immigration to warfare. “This is war. In many respects, it’s more dangerous than war because, you know, in a war they have uniforms. You know who you’re shooting at, you know who you’re going after,” he said.
Faridah Abdulkadiri
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