By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday questioned the impartiality of the federal judge who blocked his plans to deport Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador, levelling his criticism only hours before his administration will ask an appeals court to lift the judge’s order.
Just after midnight, President Donald Trump posted a social media message calling for Chief Judge James Boasberg to be disbarred. Trump reposted an article about Boasberg’s attendance at a legal conference that purportedly featured “anti-Trump speakers.”
The judge, meanwhile, refused Monday to throw out his original order before an appeals court hearing for the case. Boasberg ruled that the immigrants facing deportation must get an opportunity to challenge their designations as alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang. He said there is “a strong public interest in preventing the mistaken deportation of people based on categories they have no right to challenge.”
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“The public also has a significant stake in the Government’s compliance with the law,” the judge wrote.
Boasberg didn’t immediately decide what form a challenge should take.
The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador under an 18th century wartime law that hadn’t been invoked since World War II. Flights already were in the air on March 15 when Boasberg agreed to bar the deportations temporarily and ordered planes to return to the U.S. with the deportees. That did not happen.
The administration appealed the order. On Monday afternoon, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is scheduled to hear attorneys’ arguments.
The Alien Enemies Act allows noncitizens to be deported without the opportunity to go before an immigration or federal court judge. Trump issued a proclamation calling the Tren de Aragua gang an invading force.
Government attorneys argued in a court filing that Boasberg’s order was an “unprecedented intrusion upon the Executive’s authority to remove dangerous aliens who pose grave threats to the American people.”
“And even if reviewable, the President’s action is lawful and based upon a long history of using war authorities against organizations connected to foreign states and national security judgments, which are not subject to judicial second guessing,” they wrote.
Civil rights attorneys who sued to stop the deportations said the “implications of the government’s position are staggering.”
“If the President can designate any group as enemy aliens under the Act, and that designation is unreviewable, then there is no limit on who can be sent to a Salvadoran prison, or any limit on how long they will remain there,” they wrote.
During a hearing Friday, Boasberg vowed to determine whether the government defied his oral order from the bench to turn at least two planes around. The Justice Department has said that the judge’s oral directions did not count, that only his written order needed to be followed and that it couldn’t apply to flights that had already left the U.S.
Trump and some Republican allies have called for impeaching Boasberg, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, a Democrat. In a rare statement, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
