(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump‘s Department of Justice once again faces a noon deadline to provide details about deportation flights that carried alleged gang members to El Salvador last weekend.
District Judge James E. Boasberg, who ordered the flights to be halted, has requested information from the DOJ for three consecutive days in hopes of determining whether the administration “deliberately flouted” his orders.
The DOJ has twice maintained that it is not required to share flight details with the judge, and the deadline to provide information has shifted each day.
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Some of the 250 alleged Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang members on those planes were removed under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law granting the government additional powers against noncitizens during wartime.
Boasberg ordered a pause on the deportations and verbally said planes in the air should be turned around, but the White House claims the planes were over international waters at the time of the directives.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the standoff “partisan” but clarified the administration will “continue to comply with these court orders, we will continue to fight these battles in court.”
The DOJ could potentially invoke the state-secrets privilege on Thursday to block the judge from receiving details about those flights.
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Amid the back-and-forth, Trump has called for Boasberg’s impeachment. He called the judge “crooked” for attempting to block deportation efforts. The DOJ has also asked a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., to remove Boasberg from the case.
Trump’s actions prompted a rare response from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said.
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Border czar Tom Homan on “CUOMO” Wednesday said agents under his direction would indeed continue deportation flights and making arrests. But he said they’ll do so under other means — such as Title 8 under immigration law or “another way” — as parties fight in court over the Alien Enemies Act.
“We’ll let DOJ and the courts fight this out, and we’ll see where we go from there,” Homan said. “We’re going to keep targeting the worst of the worst.”
It was a departure from his comments on “Fox & Friends” earlier this week, when he said: “They’re not gonna stop us. We made a promise to the American people, President Trump has made a promise to the American people. I don’t care what the judges think, I don’t care what the left thinks. We’re coming.”
Homan clarified that he was told “every one” of the Venezuelan deportees has been verified as a member of the Tren de Aragua gang.
