President Donald Trump’s administration accused a federal judge on Wednesday of overstepping his judicial authority in demanding more details about flights deporting hundreds of Venezuelan migrants in an escalating confrontation between the executive and judicial branches of the U.S. government.
Justice Department lawyers said in a court filing that Washington-based U.S. District Judge James Boasberg was improperly intruding on presidential discretion to handle sensitive diplomatic and national security matters.
Boasberg has issued an order temporarily banning the administration from removing migrants from the United States under the 18th-century law that Trump invoked in proceeding with the deportations. Trump invoked the law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to declare that the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua was conducting irregular warfare against the United States, subjecting its alleged members to deportation without a final order from an immigration judge, as generally required.
“The pending questions are grave encroachments on core aspects of absolute and unreviewable Executive Branch authority,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote.
The filing on Wednesday came a day after U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts rebuked Trump for calling for the judge’s impeachment.
In blocking the deportations for two weeks on Saturday, Boasberg said the Alien Enemies Act did not provide a basis for Trump’s assertion that Tren de Aragua’s presence in the United States was akin to an act of war.
The Justice Department asked Boasberg to delay enforcement of his Tuesday order requiring them to submit more details – which would not be made public – about when exactly U.S. government planes carrying Venezuelan migrants to be deported to El Salvador took off and landed. The judge is seeking to determine if the administration defied his order against such flights, which was on the basis that the administration was overstepping its authority.
The dispute between the administration and Boasberg has prompted concern that Trump is further pushing the boundaries of executive power at the expense of the federal judiciary, which under the U.S. Constitution is a co-equal branch of the American government. Trump critics and some legal experts have expressed concern over a potentially looming constitutional crisis if his administration openly defies judicial decisions.
Trump in a social media post on Tuesday called for Boasberg’s impeachment in a congressional process that could lead to removal, describing the judge as a far-left “troublemaker and agitator.” Boasberg was appointed to the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama.
Trump’s comments prompted a rare statement from Roberts, who is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority. Roberts said appeals of judicial rulings, not impeachment, were the appropriate response to disagreeing with a judge’s decision.
In an interview later on Tuesday with the Fox News program “The Ingraham Angle,” Trump said Roberts did not mention his name in his statement. Trump said “many people” had called for the impeachment of the judge in the case, without naming Boasberg or specifying who else had called for his impeachment.
“I don’t know who the judge is, but he’s radical left. He was Obama-appointed,” Trump said. “And he actually said we shouldn’t be able to take criminals, killers, murderers, horrible, the worst people, gang members, gang leaders – that we shouldn’t be allowed to take them out of our country.”
‘Fishing expeditions’
The Justice Department said in Wednesday’s filing that providing the judge with additional details would undermine the executive branch’s ability to negotiate with other countries, citing “a serious risk of micromanaged and unnecessary judicial fishing expeditions.”
Boasberg’s chambers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday accused the judge of “an intrusion on the president’s authority” and said in an interview on Fox News that Boasberg “thinks he can control foreign policy for the entire country and he cannot.”
Three planes went on to land in El Salvador, where the deportees are being held under an agreement with Trump-aligned President Nayib Bukele’s government because Venezuela’s socialist government, a longtime U.S. adversary, is not accepting deportation flights.
The Trump administration has said one of the planes carried only migrants who had final removal orders from immigration judges, meaning they were not being deported subject to the Alien Enemies Act alone.
The Justice Department lawyers said on Tuesday the other two planes had left U.S. airspace before Boasberg’s written order was issued – indicating they were beyond the judge’s jurisdictional reach – and said his earlier spoken orders in court about having the planes turn back if necessary were not enforceable.
