A federal judge on Thursday blasted the Justice Department’s latest response to his demand for more information about deportation flights that were carried out under a wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act, calling it “woefully insufficient.”
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote in a three-page ruling that the government “again evaded its obligations” to provide information that he had been demanding for days about the timing of the Saturday flights. President Donald Trump had invoked the rarely used law to deport people the administration claimed were members of a Venezuelan gang deemed a “foreign terrorist organization.”
At an emergency hearing on Saturday, the judge had directed that any deportation flights being carried out under the AEA authority immediately return to the U.S. Two flights landed in Honduras and El Salvador within hours of the judge’s order.
The DOJ response was submitted under seal, but Boasberg said the department told him he could disclose the contents. It comprised “a six-paragraph declaration from the Acting Field Office Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Harlingen, Texas, Field Office” that did not include any new information about the flights, the judge wrote.
The Justice Department later released its filing.
As to another of the judge’s questions, whether the government would try to assert a “state secrets” privilege in order to get out of answering questions, the ICE official said, “I understand that Cabinet Secretaries are currently actively considering whether to invoke the state secrets privilege over the other facts requested by the Court’s order.”
The judge called the response “woefully insufficient. To begin, the Government cannot proffer a regional ICE official to attest to Cabinet-level discussions of the state-secrets privilege.”
He said he wanted a sworn declaration by a “person with direct involvement in the Cabinet-level discussions regarding invocation of the state-secrets privilege” by Friday morning, and to be notified of any decision on the issue by Tuesday.
He also directed the Justice Department to submit a filing explaining how it “did not violate the Court’s Temporary Restraining Orders by failing to return class members removed from the United States on the two earliest planes that departed on March 15, 2025.”
Trump, who called for Boasberg to be impeached earlier in the week, trashed him in a post on his social media platform after the ruling, accusing him of "doing everything in his power to usurp the Power of the Presidency" and calling his rulings "ridiculous."
In a statement before the judge’s ruling, a DOJ spokesperson said, “The Department of Justice continues to believe that the court’s superfluous questioning of sensitive national security information is inappropriate judicial overreach.”
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Boasberg had issued an order Wednesday demanding DOJ answer his questions and warned of the possibility of “consequences” if it did not.
A Justice Department lawyer refused to answer any questions about the flights at a tense hearing Monday and maintained the government had complied with the judge’s more limited written order shortly after the Saturday hearing.
The judge summarized the DOJ’s position as, “we don’t care, we’ll do what we want,” and ordered it to respond to his questions by noon on Tuesday.
The Justice Department responded to some of his questions in the Tuesday filing, but refused to answer detailed questions about the flights, calling his request “inappropriate.”
The lawyers contended the types of details Boasberg sought would “disclose sensitive information bearing on national security and foreign relations.”
“If, however, the Court nevertheless orders the Government to provide additional details, the Court should do so through an in camera and ex parte declaration, in order to protect sensitive information bearing on foreign relations,” they wrote Tuesday.
The judge then said they could file such a response under seal and directly to him by Wednesday at noon. But the Justice Department still refused to comply, and argued the judge should pause the case until an appeals court rules on the administration’s motion for an emergency stay.
“The distraction of the specific facts surrounding the movements of an airplane has derailed this case long enough and should end until the Circuit Court has had a chance to weigh in,” the Justice Department filing said, while also pushing for a delay so that it could present the argument that disclosing the information would reveal “state secrets.”
The judge then extended his deadline to Thursday at noon, directing the government to either answer his questions or “invoke the state-secrets doctrine and explain the basis for such invocation.”
Boasberg also took issue with the government’s contention he was trying to “beat a dead horse solely for the sake of prying from the Government legally immaterial facts.” He said he wants the information “to determine if the Government deliberately flouted its Orders issued on March 15, 2025, and, if so, what the consequences should be.”
The government’s appeal is proceeding in the meantime, with oral arguments scheduled for Monday afternoon.
