President Donald Trump is fulfilling a campaign promise with his mass deportation plan on full display — but “he can’t defy court orders” to accomplish his goals, the Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board wrote Monday in a critical rebuke.
The dressing down came after Trump officials carried on with the deportation of Venezuelan migrants in open defiance of a court order directing the administration to return flights to the United States over the weekend. While those being deported were reportedly members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, and mostly "criminals who were in the U.S. illegally," the board still slammed their send-off, which they noted came “without a hearing in an immigration court, much less a criminal conviction.”
“The Administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify the deportations without need for due process,” the board wrote Monday. “That law has rarely been used in U.S. history and not since World War II. Mr. Trump says we’re at war with the gangs so the law is appropriate, but there has been no declaration of war or resolution from Congress to that effect.”
"But it’s still troubling to see U.S. officials appear to disdain the law in the name of upholding it," the WSJ board wrote.
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The unfolding fiasco, which included an explosive courtroom showdown Monday afternoon, led the conservative editorial board to wonder aloud: “Are we already arriving at a constitutional impasse when the Administration thinks it can ignore court orders?”
The administration can appeal whatever ruling U.S. District Judge James Boasberg hands down, the board concluded, but “what the administration can’t do is defy a court order without being lawless itself.”
“Mr. Trump won the election on a promise to deport illegal migrants, especially criminals and Tren de Aragua,” the board wrote. “His voters will be happy he is fulfilling that promise. But he has to do it within the bounds of American law, or he will take the country down a dangerous road that echoes the way the Biden Administration abused the justice system. Mr. Trump was elected to stop that, not imitate it.”