‘Woefully Insufficient’: Trump DOJ Keeps Giving Alien Enemies Act Judge The Runaround

The federal judge overseeing the Alien Enemies Act case is growing increasingly irate over the Trump administration’s refusal to provide details about the removal of hundreds of people from the country last week. He called the government’s responses to his orders “woefully inadequate” in a Thursday order, and demanded that the administration explain why its decision to deport more than one hundred people under the Alien Enemies proclamation didn’t violate a court order not to do so.

From the order, it seems that D.C. Chief Judge James Boasberg’s patience with the Trump administration is wearing thin. He’s already spent a week trying to wrest basic information about two planes full of deportees, at least some of whom the administration claims were subject to Trump’s Alien Enemies Act proclamation, that the government removed to a prison in El Salvador.

Now, Boasberg is demanding that by Friday at 10:00 a.m. the Trump administration produce a “sworn declaration by a person with direct involvement” in “Cabinet-level discussions” around whether to invoke the state secrets privilege for this information. DOJ lawyers have spent the week since the Alien Enemies Act removals musing about invoking the law to shield information from the court. But even though Boasberg demanded that Trump officials either invoke the privilege with a justification by noon on Thursday or provide him the data, he said that the government had still “evaded its obligations.”

Instead, Boasberg wrote that he received a six-paragraph declaration shortly after deadline from ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations’ acting field director in Harlingen, Texas. Only the last two paragraphs somewhat addressed the two flights, he said, but they did not provide the information that Boasberg requested. Rather, the only new information it seemingly provided was the author’s understanding that “Cabinet Secretaries are currently actively considering whether to invoke the state secrets privilege.”

“This is woefully insufficient,” Boasberg wrote, adding that an “official with direct involvement” in the Cabinet discussions would now be required to attest to that in the filing due on Thursday at 10:00 a.m.

It all demonstrates the lengths to which the Trump administration has gone to avoid providing basic information about the Alien Enemies Act removals — removals it appears to have completed while knowing that Boasberg had ordered the people returned to the U.S. In addition to trying to yank Boasberg around, the government has also asserted that Trump has near-dictatorial powers when it comes to anything that he can describe as “national security” or “foreign affairs,” that the court’s jurisdiction terminates where U.S. airspace ends, and suggested that the judge didn’t know what he was talking about.

Boasberg, an extremely well-respected judge who has served as head of the FISA court and Alien Terrorist Removal court, has been pressing for simple details about when the two planes left U.S. airspace, how many people were removed on the basis of the Alien Enemies Act proclamation, and when those people were transferred into foreign custody.

The judge also demanded that the government explain on the facts why not returning the deportees to the United States on the same planes was not a violation of his order. He also said that he expects deliberations about the state secrets privilege to conclude by March 25.

Read the order here: