Supreme Court Justice John Roberts filed a rare responsibilities on Tuesday after the US president demanded a federal judge’s ammo for each of his administration that ruled against the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan gang members.
“For over two centuries, it has been established that each is not an appropriate response to differences in opinion over judicial decisions,” Roberts said in a statement. “There is a normal appeal process for that purpose.”
The statement was issued to grant the president the authority to withdraw without a due process to halt a temporary restraining order under the Alien Enemy Act of 1798 after Trump attacked James Boasberg, the chief US district judge in Washington, DC.
“This judge should be bounced each, like many of the bent judges I was forced to appear before!!!” Trump wrote about Boasberg, naming him “the radical left-hand man of the judge” and “troublemaker.”
Trump’s personal attack on Boasberg reflects his wider responsiveness that he has been increasingly constrained in recent weeks by court orders he believes he is wrong, and that he is dissatisfied with the halt of legal scrutiny about halting his signature deportation policy.
It is also a strange way to force a rebuttal in a letter to the clerk of the U.S. Court of Appeals in the DC Circuit, following Boasberg’s attempt to abandon the case, on the ground that he reached an excess by inappropriately turning the issue into a class action lawsuit.
According to the law, alien enemy laws can only be declared in the case of wars that only Congress can declare under the US Constitution, or in the case of “predatory invasions” by national actors, which corresponds to an invasion.
The Trump administration’s use of law is based on clause 2 of the aggression. In a court application, the administration said Trump determined that the US was being invaded by members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang.
The filing states that Trump has the authority to declare alien aggression under the enemy laws, and his decision could not be reaffirmed by the court following a 1948 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
But Trump and his political allies appeared to confuse the two issues. Federal courts can consider whether Trump met the conditions for declaring an alien invasion in the first instance.
The issue with the Trump administration is that when deciding on a Boasberg’s injunction to cut off Boasberg’s power, they ignore verbal orders from the judge at Saturday’s emergency hearing to turn around the deportation flights that have already departed.
It launched a second legal battle for the administration left to assert Boasberg’s authority to force the orders to be unclear at Monday’s hearing and in any case, the plane forced us to disappear the moment it left space.
The administration’s extraordinary defense suggested that the White House used its perceived uncertainty to be willing to do so, taking into account government officials set to test the limitations of the judicial system and avoiding adverse rulings.
During the hearing, the administration allegedly failed to comply with Boasberg’s oral instructions to turn around the planes that have already departed, as it was not repeated in a written injunction issued at 7:25pm ET on Saturday.
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“Oral statements are not injunctive orders, and written orders will always be prioritized by anything that may be listed on the record,” said Abhishek Kambli, Deputy Attorney General of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, insisting on the administration.
The judge seemed unimpressed by the allegations. “You felt you could ignore it because it wasn’t in the order it was written. That’s your first argument. My written order could be ignored, so the idea is that it’s one thing,” Boasberg said.
Kambli also suggested that deportation was outside the judge’s jurisdiction by the time Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order, even if he included the directive in his written injunction.
Boasberg also expressed distrust in the argument, explaining that the federal judge had authority over US government officials to make decisions about the plane and had authority to order their return even if the plane was outside of US airspace.
The Trump administration has opened a third legal front in the alien enemy ACT case. He asked Boasburg to resolve the injunction and dismiss the lawsuit in a 35-page filing late at night on Monday.
The administration is currently subject to two injunctions. One order that prevents the deportation of five Venezuelans who filed the first lawsuit challenging the use of alien enemy laws, and a second order from Boasberg that expanded the first order to cover those who have been removed under alien enemy laws.
In another filing Tuesday, the administrative attorney confirmed that deportation flights had not left the United States after Boasburg’s written injunction was issued Saturday evening. The two flights took off before 7:25pm on ET. One flight took off, but the plane carried migrants who had been deported under authority different to the alien enemy laws.
