US president appeals to Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ban on his use of an obscure wartime law.
The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court for permission to resume deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law, while a court fight continues.
The Department of Justice asked the court in a filing to lift Washington, DC-based US District Judge James Boasberg’s March 15 order calling for a temporary halt to the summary removals of the Venezuelans while a legal challenge to Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to justify the deportations plays out. The 18th-century law has historically been used only in wartime.
The Justice Department said in its filing on Friday that the case presents the question of who decides how to conduct sensitive national security-related operations, the president or the judiciary. “The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President,” the department wrote. “The republic cannot afford a different choice.”
President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the first time since World War II to justify the deportation of hundreds of people under a presidential proclamation calling the Tren de Aragua gang an invading force.
“Here, the district court’s orders have rebuffed the President’s judgements as to how to protect the Nation against foreign terrorist organizations and risk debilitating effects for delicate foreign negotiations,” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in the court filing.
Flashpoint case
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of five Venezuelan noncitizens who were being held in Texas, hours after the proclamation was made public.
The court set a Tuesday deadline for a response from the ACLU.
The case has become a flashpoint amid escalating tension between the White House and the federal courts.
Trump’s administration has argued that Boasberg’s temporary ban encroached on presidential authority to make national security decisions.
On March 18, Trump called for Boasberg’s impeachment by Congress – a process that could remove him from the bench – drawing a rebuke from the US Chief Justice John Roberts. Trump on social media called Boasberg, who was confirmed by the US Senate in 2011 in a bipartisan 96-0 vote, a “Radical Left Lunatic” and a “troublemaker and agitator.”
The DC Circuit upheld Boasberg’s order after holding a contentious hearing that involved heated language. Judge Patricia Millett told Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign that “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than has happened here.” Ensign responded, “We certainly dispute the Nazi analogy.”
Family members of many of the deported Venezuelan migrants deny the alleged gang ties. Lawyers for one of the deportees, a Venezuelan professional football player and youth coach, said US officials had wrongly labeled him a gang member based on a tattoo of a crown meant to honor his favorite team, Real Madrid.
The Alien Enemies Act allows noncitizens to be deported without the opportunity for a hearing before an immigration or federal court judge.
Boasberg ruled that immigrants facing deportation must get an opportunity to challenge their designations as alleged gang members. His ruling said there is “a strong public interest in preventing the mistaken deportation of people based on categories they have no right to challenge.”