U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has provided the Department of Justice with a one-day extension to answer his questions regarding Saturday’s deportation flights to El Salvador. The judge issued a ruling to block the deportations while the flights were in the air.
Boasberg requested answers to his questions about the timing of the deportation flights and custody handover of deportees. The Trump administration argued the “aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory” when the ruling was made. The Department of Justice pushed back on Boasberg’s request Wednesday, prompting the judge to warn of “consequences” if his questions are not answered.
“As the Supreme Court has made crystal clear, the proper recourse for a party subject to an injunction it believes is legally flawed — and is indeed later shown to be so flawed — is appellate review, not disobedience,” Boasberg said Wednesday.
The DOJ submitted a filing Wednesday morning asking for a pause of Boasberg’s order to answer his questions. He previously ordered the Trump administration to provide answers by noon on Wednesday.
“Continuing to beat a dead horse solely for the sake of prying from the Government legally immaterial facts and wholly within a sphere of core functions of the Executive Branch is both purposeless and frustrating to the consideration of the actual legal issues at stake in this case,” the DOJ wrote in the filing.
The back-and-forth between the DOJ and Boasberg began late Saturday when Boasberg blocked deportations prompted by President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has only been used in times of war.
The Trump administration said all of those deported were part of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. However, immigration attorneys have said their clients, who were deported, have no ties to the gang and were in the U.S. seeking asylum. Family members of the deportees also denied they had any affiliation with the gang.
Boasberg ruled that planes carrying people being deported under the act’s authority must turn around.
The White House said the plane was already in international airspace when the order was issued, so U.S. jurisdiction did not apply. The judge, however, said the plane’s location did not affect the order.
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“You shall inform your clients of this immediately: Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” Boasberg said in his verbal order.
The planes flying the deportees later landed in El Salvador, where the deportees were taken to a prison. This raised questions about whether the government defied the court order.