“Donald Trump gets closer to a confrontation with the judiciary”, the New York Times. The American president expelled, on Sunday, March 16, more than 200 alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren from Aragua to Salvador. However, a court decision had interrupted this procedure. Indeed, the federal judge James Boasberg had temporarily blocked, on Saturday evening, the possibility for the administration to use a law of several centuries – the Alien Enemies Act. Then he had ordered any plane verbally carrying these people to turn back to the United States. “Verbal orders have the same legal value as written directives”, specifies Elie Honig, principal legal analyst of Cnn.
For its part, the White House assured that the three planes which had on board the alleged members of the gang, classified “terrorist organization” by Washington, had already taken off when the court decision was pronounced. “This decision, which has no legal basis, was rendered after the foreign terrorists were far from the territory,” defended the Trump administration in a statement. “A single judge in a single city cannot decide the trajectory of an aircraft full of foreign terrorists who have been physically returned from the American territory,” she said.
Asked about the question of whether his government had violated the judge’s order, Donald Trump was satisfied with a laconic response: “It would be necessary to talk to the lawyers.”
Seized by human rights defenders against this law of 1798, used for the last time during the Second World War to intern from the Japanese, the American federal judge had ordered a suspension of 14 days of all expulsion. For civil rights groups, if Donald Trump’s invocation of the foreigners Act and the sedition of 1798 was confirmed by the courts, it could allow the expulsion of a very large number of adult migrants without justification or audience.
“Oops … Too late”
And on this aspect, the 47th American president can count on the support of the president of Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who confirmed on X the arrival of a “first group of 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua” and their transfer to the detention center for terrorists (CECOC), high security prison inaugurated in late January 2023 in the framework of his “war” against his “war”. In videos broadcast by the Salvadoral government, soldiers at the airport bring the prisoners of the planes and make them go up, chained, on buses. “Oops … too late,” posted Salvado -Room President Nayib Bukele on Sunday in response to an article on the court decision, with an emoji that cries laughing.
Note that James Boasberg had initially prevented the administration from expelling five people who disputed the application of the law by Donald Trump, before expanding this temporary blockage, accessing the lawyers’ lawyers to include all non-citizens detained in the United States. In a document tabled on Sunday afternoon, the Trump administration said it was “quickly informed” of the judge’s written order, upon publication on the electronic register at 7:26 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday. The Department of Justice assured that the five complainants of the first order had not been expelled, unlike other prisoners.
A “flouted” court decision
According to a person close to the file, who expressed himself at the microphone of Cnnthe planes were not in flight for a long time when the judge rendered his decision. For the continuous information chain, one of the big questions is therefore where these devices were when the order of the federal judge was given. “Could the judge have ordered them to turn around in full flight, when they had already left American territory? There is at least one gray area,” said Elie Honig, analyst at CNN.
THE Washington Post Give more answers: the flight recordings examined by the daily show that two flights have left Harlingen, Texas, for the Salvador while the federal judge examined the case, and that a third flight took off shortly after the issuance of a written order. “It really looks like an outrage in the court, slices in the New York Times David Super, professor of law at the University of Georgetown. Adding: “We can turn around if desired.” Same story on the side of Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who speaks in the same daily life of a “flouted” court decision.