On Tuesday, the Trump administration called on federal courts for appeals to block a lower court order directing the Trump administration to provide a legitimate process for scores of Venezuelan immigrants deported in March without hearing them in El Salvador under wartime law.
The Department of Justice's emergency request, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, came a day ago when the administration was supposed to send a proposal to a lower court judge on how to allow nearly 140 Venezuelans to challenge their exile. A man accused of being a member of a violent street gang called Tren de Aragua is being held in the largest security Salvador prison.
On March 15, the White House deported men on a series of flights using powerful 18th century laws known as the alien enemy law. The law has been used only three times in US history, but is intended to be used during declared war times or during foreign invasions.
The fight over Venezuelans is just one of many bitter fights that are actively seeking courts across the country against a government that is trying to expel as many immigrants as possible through repeated ways of burdening the boundaries of the law. Many times, the judge has settled on similar revenues, saying immigrants must be given the right to a basic due process before being expelled from the country.
The case before Judge James E. Boasberg, the Supreme Court justice of Washington, was one of the first deportation cases to arrive at court and remains one of the most difficult battles. The judge tried to stop the deportation of Venezuelans shortly after they took off, but the administration moved forward anyway, and he urged Trump officials to threaten them with contemptful proceedings.
Ever since the men landed in El Salvador, their lawyers have sought another order to bring them back to the United States. And last week, Judge Boasberg gave them some of what they wanted, directing Trump officials an angry decision to give the man a due process that was rejected, but left it to the administration to provide an initial plan on how to carry out his instructions.
Instead of doing so by Wednesday's deadline, Justice Department lawyers asked both the Court of Appeal and Judge Boasberg himself to put everything on hold as they challenged his underlying instructions. They argued that he lacked jurisdiction to tell the US government what to do to men in foreign detention, and said his original order “in the president's removal of dangerous criminal aliens from the United States.”
The Supreme Court has already put pressure on the case, and in early April, Venezuelan men must be given the opportunity to challenge their deportation, but only through legal proceedings known as popular warrants. A habeas corporatism warrants the defendant to leave custody and go to court to go to court.
However, the Supreme Court's decision raised an important question: Who is custody of Venezuelan men under the law?
Their lawyers argued that the Trump administration had what is known as “constructive custody” against them as they were detained in El Salvador under an agreement between the White House and Salvadoran President Naive Buquere.
The Justice Department opposed, claiming that the man was in El Salvador's sole custody and therefore exceeded the scope of an order issued by a federal judge.
In order last week, Judge Boasberg took the side of the department and said that even though he expressed skepticism that the claims are true, he cannot fully refute the administration's claims. Still, he found a way to order the White House using another rationale to give Venezuelans a way of seeking relief.
It was a problematic rationale for the Department of Justice to request the Court of Appeal to hold the case on hold. The department's lawyers attacked it as “unprecedented, unfounded and constitutionally offensive.”
“The increasingly fantastical district court injunctions continue to threaten serious harm to government national security and foreign interests,” the lawyer wrote.
The case before Justice Boasberg was unfolding as a related matter that was developed in another federal court of appeals, which considers whether President Trump was initially acting legally on the broader question of whether he was using alien enemies. The case will be held verbally in New Orleans at the end of the month.
