By Ted Hesson and Luc Cohen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. judge who temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members under a 1798 law will hold a hearing on Friday over whether to maintain the ban while also considering whether officials violated the order.
Lawyers for the administration and the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued on behalf of some of the migrants in a bid to block their deportation, will present their cases before Washington-based U.S. District Judge James Boasberg at a hearing at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT).
The escalating dispute between Boasberg and the Republican president’s administration has raised concerns among Trump critics and some legal experts about a potentially looming constitutional crisis if the administration defies judicial decisions.
Boasberg has also ordered Justice Department officials to explain by next Tuesday why he should not find that they violated the March 15 order by failing to return two planes carrying the deportees that landed in El Salvador – where the migrants are being held – after he issued his ruling on Saturday evening.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the executive and the judiciary are co-equal branches of government, along with Congress, in a system devised for checks and balances among the three.
Trump has said he would not defy any court orders. The president on Tuesday called for the judge to be impeached by Congress in a process that could lead to his removal from the bench, drawing a rare rebuke from U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts. Trump also called Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic” and “a troublemaker and agitator.” Boasberg, appointed to the bench by Democratic former President Barack Obama, was confirmed in 2011 in a bipartisan 96-0 vote in the U.S. Senate.
Trump’s administration over the weekend invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to justify the expulsions of the alleged members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua without final removal orders from immigration judges.
Boasberg issued a 14-day block on any such deportations, finding that the Alien Enemies Act did not provide a basis for Trump’s assertion that Tren de Aragua’s presence in the United States amounted to an act of war.
Lawyers and family members of several of the 238 men deported to El Salvador over the weekend have said their relatives had no ties to the gang.
“I don’t know why they connected him to the Tren de Aragua if he has nothing to do with that,” Deicy Aldana, the wife of detained migrant Andres Guillermo Morales, told Reuters on Thursday.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
