Judge demands answers from Trump administration in Venezuela deportation case

A federal judge on Monday gave US President Donald Trump's administration a Tuesday deadline to provide details about plane loads of Venezuelans it deported despite orders not to do so in a brewing showdown over presidential power.

Trump claimed the deported Venezuelans are members of the prison gang Tren de Aragua, which he designated as a foreign terrorist organisation. The White House on Saturday published a Trump proclamation that invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to declare the gang was conducting irregular warfare against the US.

Later on Saturday, US district judge James Boasberg issued an order blocking the deportations, but the flights continued and 261 people were flown to El Salvador.

A Trump administration lawyer argued the judge's initial oral ruling to block the flights was superseded by a more sparsely written order issued later, and that the government had the legal right to continue with flights once they had left US airspace.

Trump has sought to push the boundaries of executive power, challenging the historic checks and balances between the US branches of government.

During a court hearing on Monday, Boasberg repeatedly pressed justice department attorney Abhishek Kambli to provide details on the timing of the flights that transported the Venezuelans to El Salvador, including whether they took off after his order was issued.

“Why are you showing up today without answers?” Boasberg asked.

The judge was trying to ascertain the exact timeline of events surrounding his rulings on Saturday, including when the flights took off and who was on them.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said 261 people were deported, including 137 who were removed under the Alien Enemies Act and more than 100 others who were removed via standard immigration proceedings. There were also 23 Salvadoran members of the MS-13 gang, she said.

According to a Reuters timeline, Boasberg's oral ruling that “any plane containing these folks needs to be returned to the US” was issued between 6.45pm and 6.48pm. At that time two flights were in the air.

A third flight took off at 7.37pm, or 12 minutes after the judge's written order was published. The Trump team has said the third flight carried deportees processed under other immigration authorities and not the Alien Enemies Act and therefore was not subject to the order.

All three flights, which each made a preliminary stop in Honduras, landed in El Salvador late on Saturday night or Sunday morning, hours after the judge's oral and written rulings.

When Boasberg asked for such details, some of it available on public flight tracking sites, Kambli told the judge the Trump administration was resistant to sharing information because there was “a lot of operational national security and foreign relations at risk”.

Though Tren de Aragua is a feared criminal organisation that trafficks humans in South America, there has been little documented evidence of large-scale operations in the US.

The White House has asserted federal courts have no jurisdiction over Trump's authority to expel foreign enemies under the 18th-century law. During the hearing, the government argued the court's jurisdiction was limited by the statute.

Boasberg pressed Kambli about why the Trump administration did not appeal or address any disputes in court rather than let the deportation flights continue.

“Isn't the better course to return the planes to the US?” the judge asked.

Boasberg said it was “a heck of a stretch” for the Trump administration to argue his oral order issued on Saturday to return the planes was not in effect because he had not repeated as much in the written order.

Several legal experts said the deportations amounted to the Trump administration defying the judge's order.

Boasberg ordered the government by midday on Tuesday to provide details such as the timing of flight departures and arrivals in foreign countries, the number of people deported and why the government does not believe it can make the information public.

Monday's session was prompted by an emergency hearing on Saturday in which Boasberg granted a request by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to issue a two-week temporary block on Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to carry out deportations.

ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt raised the idea of whether the Trump administration's actions could trigger a constitutional crisis, saying in the hearing: “I think we're getting very close to it.”

Gelernt questioned Trump's assertion that the deported immigrants belonged to Tren de Aragua, saying: “This has been a habit of the Trump administration to overstate the danger of the people they've arrested.”

Reuters