An American federal judge pressed the Trump administration on Monday to provide details on hundreds of Venezuelans which he expelled despite an order from the court that made him, and gave the government until Tuesday, why the officials thought that they had respected his order.
The administration of the American president Donald Trump expelled more than 200 Venezuelans These are members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that was linked to the abduction, extortion and contract murders, in Salvador during the weekend, even if Judge James Boasberg temporarily prevented him from using a war on war to make the deportations.
Boasberg had previously asked the government to provide details on the calendar of flights that transported the Venezuelans to El Salvador, especially if they took off after the transmission of its order.
He reprimanded the government’s lawyer for the administration’s response during a hearing on Monday.
“Why do you appear today unanswered?” Boasberg asked.
The hearing followed a request from the government to withdraw the case judge. The Trump administration has challenged the historical controls and counterweights between the American Branches of the Government.
Since his entry into office in January, Trump has sought to push the limits of the executive power, to reduce the expenses authorized by the congress, to dismantle agencies and to dismiss thousands of federal workers.
Emergency session on weekends
Monday’s session was invited to an emergency hearing on Saturday, in which the American union of civil freedoms asked Boasberg to issue a temporary block of two weeks on Use of the Extraterrestrial Enemies Act from 1798 to carry out the deportations.
The White House said on Sunday that the federal courts had no competence on the authority of Trump to expel foreign enemies under a 18th century law, historically used only in wartime, although he also declared that he had respected the order.
In a legal file shortly before the hearing on Monday, the Trump administration declared that a spoken directive of the judge on Saturday to return planes bearing migrants was “not enforceable” because it was not in a written order.
The administration said that it had not violated Boasberg’s written order to intervene to the immigration authorities to withdraw migrants because the planes had already left during its publication.
But the judge declared in court that he always wanted to know when the flights left, where they were going, when they left us airspace and when they landed in a foreign country. He also asked when individuals had been transferred to the foreign guard.
“There is a lot of operational national security and foreign relations in danger,” said Abhishek Kambli, lawyer for the Ministry of Justice, explaining why the Trump administration was resistant to information sharing.
Boasberg ordered the Midi Government on Tuesday to provide details such as the calendar of flight departures and arrivals in foreign countries, the number of people expelled and why the government did not think that it could make this information public.
Boasberg did not say if the government had violated its orders on Saturday.
The judge sometimes seemed to be skeptical of the justification of the Trump administration for not returning the planes in the United States, he has repeatedly pressed Kambli, who said on several occasions that there were no questions that he could not share publicly.
“Borders on the absurd”
Some legal experts have said that the location of the plane in the air was not relevant.
Michael J. Gerhardt, professor of constitutional law at the School of Law of the University of Carolina of the North, said that the “bordered the absurd” argument and was “contrary to a well -established constitutional right”, holding that federal officials are subject to the Constitution, wherever they are.
“A government plane on government activities is not in an area without law,” said Gerhardt, adding: “If this is not the case, then the government can simply do whatever it wants to do so much as long as it no longer works on American soil.”
The congress under republican control largely supporting its agenda, federal judges have often been the only constraint of its executive actions, arousing many people while they consider their legality. In some cases, advocacy groups have declared that the administration refused to comply with the judicial orders.
The Trump administration has described various Venezuelans deported as gangs, “monsters” or “extraterrestrial terrorists” variously, but did not provide evidence to support its claims.
The press secretary of the White House, Karoline Leavitt, said that 261 people had been expelled in total, including 137 which had been withdrawn under the Extraterrestrial Enemies Act and more than 100 other people who were withdrawn by standard immigration procedure. There were also 23 Salvadoral members of the Gang MS-13, said Leavitt.
The Trump administration was also found to defend its actions in the expulsion of a Rhode Island doctor in Lebanon last week.
The American authorities said on Monday that they had expelled Dr. Rasha Alawieh after discovering “sympathetic photos and videos” of the former longtime leader of Hezbollah and activists in the file of the deleted articles of his mobile phone.
Alawieh had also told agents that in Lebanon she attended the funeral last month of The head killed of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallahthat she supported from a “religious point of view” as a Shiite Muslim.
The judge’s department provided these details because he sought to ensure a federal judge in Boston that customs and the protection of American borders did not deliberately disobey an order he made on Friday which should have interrupted the immediate withdrawal of Alawieh.
