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America First agenda and holding the Fake News accountable. MAGA!”
It’s a constitutional showdown (Axios):
The Trump administration says it ignored a Saturday court order to turn around two planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members because the flights were over international waters and therefore the ruling didn’t apply, two senior officials tell Axios.
Shortly before 7 p.m. ET on Saturday, the New York Times reports, “Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the Trump administration to cease its use of an obscure wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, as a pretext for the expulsion of migrants, and immediately return anyone it was expelling under the act to the United States.”
Earlier in the day, five Venezuelans held by DHS “filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that their expulsion on that basis would violate federal law and the Constitution’s guarantee to due process.”
Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against use of the Alien Enemies Act to affect their deportation. Besides, because none of the prisoners received a hearing, it is unclear how many of the 250 passengers on the planes were actual gang members, illegally in the country, on visas , on green cards, or innocent bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time when detained. The Trump White House didn’t so much as say “trust us.”
Immigration attorney Lindsay Toczylowski posted to Bluesky that she believes one of #Donalds_Desaparecidos is her client and an asylum-seeker.
This timeline will be scrutinized and argued in court (Axios):
The timeline: The president signed the executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act on Friday night, but intentionally did not advertise it. On Saturday morning, word of the order leaked, officials said, prompting a mad scramble to get planes in the air.
- At 2:31 p.m. Saturday, an immigration activist who tracks deportation flights, posted on X that “TWO HIGHLY UNUSUAL ICE flights” were departing from Texas to El Salvador, which had agreed to accept Venezuelan gang members deported from the U.S.
- Hours later, during a court hearing filed by the ACLU., Boasberg ordered a halt to the deportations and said any flights should be turned around mid-air.
- “This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately,” he told the Justice Department, according to the Washington Post.
- At that point, about 6:51 p.m., both flights were off the Yucatan Peninsula, according to flight paths posted on X.
But the Trump administration had no intention of complying. The White House worked feverishly to escape court review. The showman wanted to demonstrate who’s boss and send a signal worthy of Vladimir Putin defenestrating a political enemy. *
They just needed killin’ comes next
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller stage-managed the deportation, Axios reports, aided by Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem of dog-shooting fame.
“Very important that people understand we are not actively defying court orders,” an unnamed White House official told Axios. The judge’s ruling simply came too late to change course. “We wanted them on the ground first, before a judge could get the case, but this is how it worked out,” said the official.
“Court order defied. First of many as I’ve been warning and start of true constitutional crisis,” attorney Mark Zaid posted to Twitter/X. “Ultimately will lead to Trump #impeachment proceedings.”
Count me skeptical. Both on the impeachment and because the White House has a very slippery definition of defying.
The White House is doubling down on its strongman shtick (which looks less like a shtick). As I’ve written, their game is to find the legal line, step over it, and dare anyone to push back. Lather, rinse. repeat. Now with virtual immunity granted by the Roberts court, Trump feels he’s above the law and untouchable. He IS the law,
A defiant White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, “If the Democrats want to argue in favor of turning a plane full of rapists, murderers, and gangsters back to the United States, that’s a fight we are more than happy to take.”
Next up from the Trump WH, it’s the “They just needed killin'” defense. The Constitution and the rule of law are inconveniences.
* Doubly frightening, many in Trump’s base will cream their jeans over it. And they live in your neighborhood.
Update:
Something else I meant to add from ABC’s coverage: “top lawyers and officials in the administration made the determination that since the flights were over international waters, Boasberg’s order did not apply.”
I’m no lawyer, but I imagine complying with the judge’s order that the planes be instructed to turn around damn sure applied to Trump’s lawyers standing on U.S. soil who ignored it. What is Boasberg prepared to do about it and to them?
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