{"id":888,"date":"2025-03-26T07:12:19","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T07:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/03\/26\/judge-maintains-block-on-trump-administrations-deportations-under-wartime-law-the-new-york-times\/"},"modified":"2025-03-26T07:12:19","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T07:12:19","slug":"judge-maintains-block-on-trump-administrations-deportations-under-wartime-law-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/03\/26\/judge-maintains-block-on-trump-administrations-deportations-under-wartime-law-the-new-york-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Maintains Block on Trump Administration\u2019s Deportations Under Wartime Law &#8211; The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"site-content\">\n<article id=\"story\">\n<div id=\"top-wrapper\">\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/#after-top\">SKIP ADVERTISEMENT<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<h2 data-testid=\"headline\">Justice Dept. Refuses to Give Judge Flight Data, Citing State Secrets<\/h2>\n<p>The extraordinary move by the Justice Department was an escalation of its conflict with the judge in the case and, by extension, the federal judiciary.<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"imageblock-wrapper\">\n<figure aria-label=\"media\" role=\"group\">\n<div data-testid=\"imageContainer-children-Image\"><picture><source media=\"(max-width: 599px) and (min-device-pixel-ratio: 3),(max-width: 599px) and (min-resolution: 3dppx),(max-width: 599px) and (min-resolution: 288dpi)\" ><source media=\"(max-width: 599px) and (min-device-pixel-ratio: 2),(max-width: 599px) and (min-resolution: 2dppx),(max-width: 599px) and (min-resolution: 192dpi)\" ><source media=\"(max-width: 599px) and (min-device-pixel-ratio: 1),(max-width: 599px) and (min-resolution: 1dppx),(max-width: 599px) and (min-resolution: 96dpi)\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Judge James E. Boasberg stands in a courtroom.\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/03\/24\/us\/politics\/dc-immig\/dc-immig-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&#038;auto=webp&#038;disable=upscale\"   decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\"><\/picture><\/div><figcaption data-testid=\"photoviewer-children-ImageCaption\"><span>Judge James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court in Washington has tried for almost 10 days to get the Trump administration to give him information about flights deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador.<\/span><span><span>Credit&#8230;<\/span><span><span aria-hidden=\"false\">Valerie Plesch\/Bloomberg<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><time datetime=\"2025-03-25T22:33:51-04:00\"><span>Published March 24, 2025<\/span><span>Updated March 25, 2025<\/span><\/time><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<section name=\"articleBody\">\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<p>The Trump administration told a federal judge on Monday night that it would not disclose any further information about two flights of Venezuelan migrants it sent to El Salvador this month despite a court order to turn back the planes, declaring that doing so would jeopardize state secrets.<\/p>\n<p>The move sharply escalated the growing conflict between the administration and the judge \u2014 and, by extension, the federal judiciary \u2014 in a case that legal experts fear is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/03\/19\/us\/politics\/trump-deportations-constitutional-crisis-impeachment.html\" title>precipitating a constitutional crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For almost 10 days, the judge, James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court in Washington, has been trying to get the Trump administration to give him information about the two flights in an effort to determine whether officials allowed them to continue on to El Salvador in violation of his order to have them return to the United States.<\/p>\n<p>But in a patent act of defiance, the Justice Department told Judge Boasberg that giving him any further information about the flights \u2014 which the Trump administration maintains were carrying members of a Venezuelan street gang called Tren de Aragua \u2014 would \u201cundermine or impede future counterterrorism operations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<p>\u201cThe court has all of the facts it needs to address the compliance issues before it,\u201d the department wrote in <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436\/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436.56.0.pdf\" title rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">a filing<\/a>. \u201cFurther intrusions on the executive branch would present dangerous and wholly unwarranted separation-of-powers harms with respect to diplomatic and national security concerns that the court lacks competence to address.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The state secrets privilege is a legal doctrine that can allow the executive branch to block the use of evidence in court \u2014 and sometimes shut down entire lawsuits \u2014 when it says litigating such matters in open court would risk revealing information that could damage national security.<\/p>\n<p>Typically, however, the executive branch confidentially provides a detailed description of the sensitive evidence to a judge to show why it is too sensitive to discuss in open court. The Trump administration\u2019s move is extraordinary in part because it is refusing to provide information to Judge Boasberg \u2014 a former presiding judge of the nation\u2019s national security surveillance court \u2014 even privately and in a secure facility for handling classified information.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the administration has not even claimed the information at issue is classified.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, it submitted statements from <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436\/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436.56.2.pdf\" title rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Marco Rubio<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436\/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436.56.3.pdf\" title rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Kristi Noem<\/a>, the secretaries of state and homeland security, saying that sharing the information with a court would jeopardize national security and foreign policy, including by making foreign partners less likely to trust the Trump administration to keep confidential negotiations and operational details secret, and by fueling public speculation about the matter.<\/p>\n<p>The Justice Department\u2019s stubborn response to Judge Boasberg came on the same day that he reaffirmed his initial order barring the Trump administration from using a wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to summarily deport scores of Venezuelan migrants it deemed to be members of Tren de Aragua.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<p>The judge\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436\/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436.53.0.pdf\" title rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">order<\/a> said that the block should remain in place so the migrants could have the opportunity to challenge accusations that they belong to the gang before being flown out of the country to a prison in El Salvador.<\/p>\n<p>Also on Monday, a federal appeals court in Washington held a nearly two-hour hearing on the Trump administration\u2019s request to nullify Judge Boasberg\u2019s underlying order, taking up many of the same issues.<\/p>\n<p>The three-judge panel did not issue an immediate ruling. But during questioning, a Justice Department lawyer acknowledged that if the court were to reverse Judge Boasberg\u2019s order, the administration could immediately resume transferring people to the Salvadoran prison.<\/p>\n<p>From the moment Judge Boasberg, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, entered his original order pausing the deportation flights on March 15, Mr. Trump and his allies <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/03\/18\/us\/politics\/trump-venezuela-deportations-doj-court-order.html\" title>have accused him of overstepping<\/a> his authority by intruding on the president\u2019s prerogative to conduct foreign affairs.<\/p>\n<p>The question at the heart of the case turns equally on the issue of whether Mr. Trump himself overstepped by ignoring limits set out in the text of the Alien Enemies Act and in the Constitution for when and how wartime deportations can take place.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<p>The law, passed in 1798, gives the government wide latitude during an invasion or wartime to summarily round up subjects of a \u201chostile nation\u201d who are over the age of 14 and remove them from the country with little or no due process.<\/p>\n<p>The administration has repeatedly claimed that the Venezuelan migrants in question are members of Tren de Aragua and should be considered subjects of a hostile nation because Mr. Trump has said they were acting at the direction of the Venezuelan government.<\/p>\n<p>The White House has also insisted that the arrival of dozens of members of the gang to the United States constitutes an invasion or a \u201cpredatory incursion\u201d under the law, which can prompt a president\u2019s wartime deportation powers even without a declared war.<\/p>\n<p>Lawyers for Venezuelan migrants have maintained that the law cannot be used against Tren de Aragua members because the gang is not a government and its activities do not amount to an invasion. Notably, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/03\/20\/us\/politics\/intelligence-trump-venezuelan-gang-alien-enemies.html\" title>the U.S. intelligence community circulated an assessment last month concluding<\/a> that the gang is not under the control of the Venezuelan government, contrary to what Mr. Trump has since contended.<\/p>\n<p>The lawyers have also questioned whether many of the migrants the Trump administration has accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua are actually members of the gang. They have argued that the Venezuelans should be able to challenge those determinations before being flown out of the country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<p>When Judge Boasberg initially paused the flights, he said his decision was based on both the lack of due process the migrants received and on the larger question about whether Mr. Trump\u2019s use of the Alien Enemies Act truly fit the situation at hand.<\/p>\n<p>But in keeping the restraining order in place, the judge wrote that he had relied solely on the issue of due process. He added that he did not need to \u201cresolve the thorny question of whether the judiciary has the authority to assess\u201d Mr. Trump\u2019s claim that the Alien Enemies Act can be legitimately used against Tren de Aragua as a group.<\/p>\n<p>During the hearing on Monday before the appeals court panel, two of the judges seemed to agree that the migrants the government wants to remove under the law could go to court to challenge whether they were actually members of Tren de Aragua.<\/p>\n<p>But it was unclear what those challenges might look like.<\/p>\n<p>One of the judges, Patricia A. Millett, a Democratic appointee, signaled skepticism with the government\u2019s position that the panel should stay Judge Boasberg\u2019s restraining order.<\/p>\n<p>She grilled a Justice Department lawyer, suggesting that if the Venezuelans could be deported without due process, then anyone \u2014 herself included \u2014 could simply be declared a national security threat and flown out of the country. And Judge Millett pointed out that even German citizens arrested under the Alien Enemies Act during World War II had the opportunity to argue in hearings that the law did not apply to them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-5\">\n<p>\u201cNazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>A second judge, Justin R. Walker, a Republican appointee, agreed that the migrants could challenge whether they were covered by Mr. Trump\u2019s invocation of the wartime act, but he appeared to be skeptical of allowing Judge Boasberg\u2019s order to stay in place for technical reasons.<\/p>\n<p>He repeatedly suggested that if migrants wanted to challenge their removal they should do so not in Washington, but in places where they are being held, like Texas.<\/p>\n<p>The third judge on the panel, Karen L. Henderson, a Republican appointee, said almost nothing at the hearing.<\/p>\n<p>The Justice Department\u2019s invocation of the state secrets privilege was only its latest effort to stonewall Judge Boasberg\u2019s attempts to understand whether the government had violated his order.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, just hours before a hearing in which they were going to have to discuss the flight, department lawyers moved to cancel the proceeding. On the same day, they took the even bolder step of trying to having Judge Boasberg removed from the case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-6\">\n<p>But the invocation of the state secrets privilege in this context was a new level of aggression.<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court first recognized the state secrets privilege in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oyez.org\/cases\/1940-1955\/345us1\" title rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">a 1953 decision<\/a> that approved the withholding of information whenever there is \u201creasonable danger\u201d of exposing information that should not be divulged for national security reasons.<\/p>\n<p>After the Bush administration frequently invoked the state secrets privilege to block lawsuits on topics like torture and warrantless wiretapping, the Justice Department in the Obama era <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/09\/23\/us\/politics\/23secrets.html\" title>imposed new limits on the power<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/archive\/opa\/documents\/state-secret-privileges.pdf\" title rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">policy<\/a> called for the department to reject a request to use the privilege if officials decide the motivation for doing so is to \u201cconceal violations of the law, inefficiency or administrative error,\u201d to \u201cprevent embarrassment\u201d or to block information \u201cthe release of which would not reasonably be expected to cause significant harm to national security.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Attorney General Pam Bondi <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436\/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436.56.1.pdf\" title rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">told Judge Boasberg in a filing<\/a> that she was satisfied that the Trump administration\u2019s new invocation of the privilege was \u201cadequately supported and warranted.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.\u00a0<span> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/alan-feuer\">More about Alan Feuer<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>A version of this article appears in print on <span>\u00a0<\/span>, Section <\/p>\n<p>A<\/p>\n<p>, Page <\/p>\n<p>16<\/p>\n<p> of the New York edition<\/p>\n<p> with the headline: <\/p>\n<p>Judge Maintains Halt on Deportations Tied to Wartime Law<span>. <a href=\"https:\/\/nytimes.wrightsmedia.com\/\">Order Reprints<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper\">Today\u2019s Paper<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/subscriptions\/Multiproduct\/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=48JQY\">Subscribe<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"bottom-wrapper\">\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/#after-bottom\">SKIP ADVERTISEMENT<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Justice Dept. Refuses to Give Judge Flight Data, Citing State Secrets The extraordinary move by the Justice Department was an escalation of its conflict with the judge in the case and, by extension, the federal judiciary. Judge James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court in Washington has tried for almost 10 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}