'Real stretch': Expert flags 2 'important' details as judges 'dissect' deportation case

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig revealed two key details from the latest legal blow to hit President Donald Trump after the administration moved forward with deportation flights of alleged Venezuelan gang members.

Honig on Wednesday delivered “two big takeaways from the ruling” after a three-judge panel rejected arguments from government attorneys who insisted that the Trump administration had the executive authority to move forward with flights under the Alien Enemies Act.

“First of all, one of the arguments that the Trump administration was making, and we've heard them say this publicly, is ‘this court has no jurisdiction to even get involved in this case, they cannot decide, they cannot second guess anything the president does on these immigration matters,’” Honig said. “Well, all the judges here, all three of them, reject that premise. They say, ‘we can get involved here. We can have the power to make a judicial decision, and we will do that.’”

Honig, a former federal prosecutor, told viewers in a CNN interview just after the federal appeals court dealt yet another legal defeat to Trump that the second takeaway “is really important.”

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“This was a split 2 to 1, and the thing that ultimately the administration, the Trump administration, has to prove here and that they allege, is that this was an invasion, or a predatory incursion made by a foreign government,” Honig said. “Now, I’ve said before on the air, all of those terms sound like real stretches as applied here and there's a whole section of the opinion where the court sort of dissects those meticulously."

Honig added that while the ruling was a temporary order, the two judges in the majority essentially concluded, “based on what we have in front of us, that is a real stretch to apply those terms, and we don't think those terms are ultimately going to apply to this situation here.”

In a 2-1 decision, the Washington D.C.-based appeals court refused to lift the emergency order entered by a lower court judge who blocked the administration from carrying out the flights that government officials claimed carried members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

Watch the clip below or at this link.