A Thursday afternoon hearing in federal court grew heated as an attorney for President Donald Trump's administration was peppered by tough questions from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg.
According to Politico, Boasberg — who was initially appointed to Washington D.C. superior court by former President George W. Bush before his elevation to the federal bench by former President Barack Obama — convened the hearing to find out whether the administration deliberately disobeyed his ruling to return three deportation flights that he ordered to be sent back to the United States. Venezuelan immigrants on those flights were being deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has only been invoked three times in U.S. history and was last used during World War II. The administration has said that those deported were members of the violent gang "Tren de Aragua," though it has later acknowledged that at least one of the men on the flights was deported and jailed in an El Salvadoran mega-prison by mistake.
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Deputy Attorney General Drew Ensign argued Thursday that after Boasberg handed down his decision to turn the planes around until the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act could be further litigated, that he relayed that information to three senior officials within the State Department, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. When Ensign said that he was given no specific information about the deportation flights, Politico reported that Boasberg was "incredulous."
"They told you nothing about these planes?” Boasberg asked. “You were there arguing on behalf of the government and they told you nothing?”
Ensign countered that he "diligently tried to obtain that information and was not able to do so," prompting the judge to apparently "raise his eyebrows and shake his head in disagreement." Boasberg then observed that the administration carried on with the flights after he issued his order on the morning of March 15. From the bench, he asked Ensign: “Why wouldn’t the prudent thing be to say, ‘Let’s slow down here. Let’s see what the judge says?'" The jurist also opined that the administration accelerated the schedule of the deportation flights in anticipation of being overruled by the judiciary.
"If you really believed everything you did that day was legal and would survive a court challenge, you wouldn’t have operated the way you did," Boasberg said.
Ensign eventually admitted during the hearing that seven women and one man aboard the flights to El Salvador were returned to the United States, which Boasberg used to illustrate that his order for those deported to be returned back to the U.S. was "operationally feasible." The judge didn't decide during Thursday's hearing whether he would hold any Trump officials in contempt, though he's expected to officially make that decision later this month.
Click here to read Politico's full article.