A US federal judge said the government “evaded its obligations” to answer his questions about this weekend’s deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members.
James Boasberg, the top federal judge in Washington DC, gave justice department lawyers a Thursday deadline provide information on the government’s deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador by plane.
They provided a six-paragraph declaration from an immigration official saying cabinet secretaries are considering invoking the state secrets privilege and did not give the flight information he requested.
Boasberg had ordered the government to halt the deportation flights but the White House said the planes had already taken off.
The declaration from a regional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official also repeated previously shared information.
In the government responses they said they needed more than 24 hours to carefully consider whether “to invoke the state secrets privilege”, which allows the government to not turn over sensitive national security information in lawsuits.
But Boasberg appeared frustrated by that defence.
“To begin, the Government cannot proffer a regional ICE official to attest to Cabinet-level discussions of the state-secrets privilege; indeed, his declaration on that point, not surprisingly, is based solely on his unsubstantiated ‘understand[ing],'” he wrote.
He has now given the Trump administration a Friday deadline to provide an update from someone directly involved in the discussions.
Trump this weekend invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act and deported more than 200 Venezuelans, alleging almost all were members of the gang Tren del Agua.
Boasberg had verbally ordered the flights halted, with any currently in the air turned back. On Monday, Boasberg asked to hear from the Trump administration’s lawyer about why the flights had not returned to the US.
He will hold a previously scheduled hearing on the use of the Alien Enemies Act on Friday.
