The Justice Department has asked an appeals court to yank a federal judge who ordered a halt to flights deporting alleged migrant gang members off the case completely.
The feds asked the DC Circuit Court of Appeals Monday to remove Chief DC US District Judge James Boasberg from hearing a lawsuit involving the deportation of illegal immigrants who are reputed Venezuelan gang members after Boasberg set a Monday afternoon hearing to make the DOJ answer for allegedly flouting his order from the weekend.
Boasberg ruled Saturday the administration is temporarily barred from letting planes carry alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang to Central America, but some of the flights took off anyway, forcing the judge to drag the DOJ lawyers back into court Monday.
In an apparent bid to prevent the hearing, the DOJ asked for Boasberg to be taken off the case on the grounds that forcing the Trump administration to answer sensitive national security questions in open court “is flagrantly improper,” Law & Crime first reported.
Since the case is about “flights that removed aliens identified as associated with a designated foreign terrorist organization” — any questions about what happened involves questions of national security and foreign relations and can’t be handled “in a rushed posture,” the letter says.
The appellate court didn’t answer the letter before the 5 p.m. hearing took place, with DOJ lawyers claiming they didn’t think they needed to follow Boasberg’s oral order to turn the flights around because it wasn’t included in his written order that came out after Saturday’s hearing.
Five Venezuelans sued the Trump administration to block the president from invoking the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act to go after the ruthless prison gang, which Attorney General Pam Bondi has said is a “foreign arm of the Venezuelan government.”
Despite Boasberg’s Saturday order halting deportations for 14 days and ordering the return of flights that had already left, hundreds of individuals were still flown out of the US and have not been returned.
The ACLU — which is representing the Venezuelan plaintiffs — didn’t immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.