Latest news with #Boasberg
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3 hours ago
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Administration says it will appeal order granting El Salvador deportees due process
The Trump administration says it will appeal a court order requiring it to allow hundreds of noncitizens who were deported in March to El Salvador to challenge their detentions. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg last week ordered the Trump administration to give the hundreds of men deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act the right to challenge their detentions as unlawful. Lawyers with the Department of Justice filed a notice of appeal Tuesday, signaling plans to challenge a lower court's decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. MORE: El Salvador deportees are entitled to due process, judge rules The Trump administration touched off a legal battle in March when it invoked the Alien Enemies Act -- an 18th century wartime authority used to remove noncitizens with little-to-no due process -- to deport two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to El Salvador by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a "hybrid criminal state" that is invading the United States. An official with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledged that "many" of the men deported on March 15 lack criminal records in the United States -- but said that "the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose" and "demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile." White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson slammed Boasberg's decision last week, saying in a statement that Boasberg lacks the authority to intervene in the deportations. "Judge Boasberg has no authority to intervene with immigration or national security -- authority that rests squarely with President Trump and the Executive Branch. His current and previous attempts to prevent President Trump from deporting criminal illegal aliens poses a direct threat to the safety of the American people," Jackson said, referring to other recent rulings by the judge. "Fortunately for the American people, Judge Boasberg does not have the last word," Jackson said. Boasberg, in last week's ruling, said that the detainees -- regardless of their alleged criminal status -- deserve the right to challenge the government's claims against them.
5 hours ago
- Politics
Trump administration says it will appeal order granting El Salvador deportees due process
The Trump administration says it will appeal a court order requiring it to allow hundreds of noncitizens who were deported in March to El Salvador to challenge their detentions. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg last week ordered the Trump administration to give the hundreds of men deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act the right to challenge their detentions as unlawful. Lawyers with the Department of Justice filed a notice of appeal Tuesday, signaling plans to challenge a lower court's decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Trump administration touched off a legal battle in March when it invoked the Alien Enemies Act -- an 18th century wartime authority used to remove noncitizens with little-to-no due process -- to deport two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to El Salvador by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a "hybrid criminal state" that is invading the United States. An official with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledged that "many" of the men deported on March 15 lack criminal records in the United States -- but said that "the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose" and "demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile." White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson slammed Boasberg's decision last week, saying in a statement that Boasberg lacks the authority to intervene in the deportations. "Judge Boasberg has no authority to intervene with immigration or national security -- authority that rests squarely with President Trump and the Executive Branch. His current and previous attempts to prevent President Trump from deporting criminal illegal aliens poses a direct threat to the safety of the American people," Jackson said, referring to other recent rulings by the judge. "Fortunately for the American people, Judge Boasberg does not have the last word," Jackson said. Boasberg, in last week's ruling, said that the detainees -- regardless of their alleged criminal status -- deserve the right to challenge the government's claims against them.
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4 days ago
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The case a federal judge called 'Kafkaesque'
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. Have you ever had a word stuck in your head? I can't seem to shake this one from a court decision this week: entombed. The haunting term came from the chief federal trial judge in Washington, D.C., James Boasberg. He's presiding over a lawsuit from scores of Venezuelan immigrants held in a Salvadoran prison known for human rights abuses, called the Center for Terrorism Confinement, or CECOT for short. The judge wrote a 69-page opinion, published Wednesday, explaining why the Trump administration must work to let the immigrants challenge their rushed renditions to that prison back in March. Boasberg opened with a nod to Franz Kafka's 'The Trial.' The Obama appointee compared the ordeal to that of Kafka's protagonist, Josef K., whose absurd legal saga is a helpful shorthand to draw attention to farcical affairs. While the term Kafkaesque can seem dramatic, it applies here. After all, U.S. agents hustled the men out of the country without due process, backed by the purported authority of an 18th-century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, whose factual and legal propriety has been called into grave doubt not only by judges around the country but by U.S. intelligence agencies. On the latter front, a declassified memo released last month showed that officials had rejected President Donald Trump's basis for citing the act. He had claimed the Venezuelan government controlled the gang to which these men allegedly belonged. But experts in Trump's own government disagreed. So, Trump's use of the law was bogus from the start. On top of that, at a hurried hearing in March, Boasberg had ordered the U.S. to keep custody of the men — an order the government ignored, and that disobedience is the subject of separate contempt litigation that the administration is appealing. But that foundational sham and defiance wasn't the issue in Boasberg's ruling this week. His narrower, modest point was that the men never got due process to challenge their removals under the act. 'Perhaps the President lawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act. Perhaps, moreover, [government] Defendants are correct that Plaintiffs are gang members,' the judge wrote, adding: 'But — and this is the critical point — there is simply no way to know for sure, as the CECOT Plaintiffs never had any opportunity to challenge the Government's say-so.' Our word-of-the-week then emerged when the jurist observed that 'significant evidence has come to light indicating that many of those currently entombed in CECOT have no connection to the gang and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations.' Entombed in CECOT. Now what? Boasberg said the government must facilitate the plaintiffs' ability to challenge their removals. But he left it to the government to decide how to make that happen. 'Exactly what such facilitation must entail will be determined in future proceedings,' the judge wrote, giving the administration a week to come up with a plan. We'll be eagerly awaiting the official response — or, the latest emergency Supreme Court appeal from a judge's effort to bring the administration into legal compliance. At any rate, it doesn't seem like anyone is going anywhere anytime soon, even if Boasberg's order stays on track, which is not a sure bet. Until then: entombed. Have any questions or comments for me? Please submit them on this form for a chance to be featured in the Deadline: Legal blog and newsletter. This article was originally published on
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5 days ago
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5 Points On Boasberg's Big Alien Enemies Act Ruling
After being mostly scuttled by the Supreme Court, the original Alien Enemies Act case has re-entered the conversation. While the high court took most of the Alien Enemies Act challenges out of the hands of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of D.C. and distributed them to the individual judicial districts where Venezuelan nationals are being detained under the act, it left unresolved the fate of the deportees already removed to CECOT in El Salvador. In a significant ruling yesterday, Boasberg concluded that the CECOT detainees were denied due process when they were removed March 15. He ordered the Trump administration to propose a plan within a week for how to 'facilitate' giving the detainees the due process they were denied. While President Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act was itself historic and the cases challenging his proclamation are testing the robustness of due process, the real import of these cases is that they are where the executive branch is threatening to and in fact is running roughshod over the judicial branch. In defying court orders, including to 'facilitate' the return of other wrongfully deported foreign nationals, the Trump administration has provoked a constitutional clash, practically daring the judicial branch to try to stop it. Boasberg's decision sets up another potential focal point for that constitutional clash. Here are 5 points on how Boasberg's ruling anticipates that confrontation: Boasberg's ruling wasn't a complete victory for the CECOT detainees. He found it unlikely that they would win their habeas corpus claims. For the detainees to prevail on the habeas claim, they had to show that they were in the 'constructive custody' of the United States, meaning under U.S. control or held at its behest. It's troubling that Boasberg was unconvinced on this point and even he seemed troubled by it, but by taking it off the table, he eliminates one ripe avenue of appeal for the government. By grounding his ruling in the due process clause of the 5th Amendment instead, he aligned with the Supreme Court's recent strong defense of due process in this very case. And in the end, he winds up at roughly the same place because he concluded that the remedy for violating the detainees due process was to allow them the chance to pursue the habeas claims they were denied in the first place. Boasberg seems keenly aware that this Supreme Court is going to give maximum deference to the executive branch. I suspect that's one reason he effectively sidestepped the 'constructive custody' issue. The Roberts Court isn't going to get involved in foreign policy by ordering the administration to make demands on El Salvador, and so Boasberg is walking a fine line. 'Although the Court is mindful that such a remedy may implicate sensitive diplomatic or national-security concerns within the exclusive province of the Executive Branch, it also has a constitutional duty to provide a remedy that will 'make good the wrong done,'' Boasberg wrote. In open court previously, Boasberg had mused about how due process could be provided without having to return the detainees to the United States. In his written opinion, Boasberg said that facilitating a return of the CECOT detainees is 'not necessarily' the only presumed remedy for the due process violation. Boasberg was vague about what kind of process he was looking for to provide the detainees with their denied due process. 'Exactly what such facilitation must entail will be determined in future proceedings,' he wrote. His invitation to the government to propose a process invites some sort of remote habeas proceeding. But in the short term it may not matter because the Trump administration will almost certainly appeal Boasberg's preliminary injunction to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and ask it to pause the case so that it doesn't have to propose a plan for giving the detainees belated due process, before the deadline Boasberg set for next week. From there, the case is a sure bet to go to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the CECOT detainees, who are approaching the three-month mark of their confinement there, will remain in indefinite custody. Plaintiffs typically must post an Injunction bond, which is intended to make defendants whole if it turns out the injunction was improperly granted. It's common for judges to waive an injunction bond when the injunction is against the federal government. I was left wondering whether Boasberg set a nominal bond of $1 here to sidestep the yet-to-pass House GOP's reconciliation bill which contains a provision that would prohibit federal judges from enforcing contempt citations unless a bond was posted when an injunction was issued. No way to confirm Boasberg's intentions, but it caught my eye. In his opinion, Boasberg highlights more than once the Trump administration's poor conduct in this case from the beginning. You'll recall he already found probable cause that the administration violated his order when it proceeded with the deportations on March 15 and didn't turn the planes around. He references his contempt of court inquiry in the opinion. All of which serves as good reminder that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals placed an administrative stay on the contempt of court inquiry more than six weeks ago. It's been fully briefed since April 28. And still no ruling from the appeals court. Meanwhile, several other courts have begun incipient contempt of court proceedings against the administration in other Alien Enemies Act cases and adjacent 'facilitate' cases. It's not at all clear what is taking the D.C. Circuit so long.
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5 days ago
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A Federal Judge Orders Relief for Alleged Gang Members Deported and Imprisoned Without Due Process
On April 7 in Trump v. J.G.G., the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that foreign nationals who allegedly are subject to immediate deportation as "alien enemies" have a due process right to contest that designation. But where does that leave deportees who were denied that opportunity before they were peremptorily shipped off to prison in El Salvador last March? A preliminary injunction that a federal judge granted on Wednesday supplies an answer: The Trump administration "must facilitate [their] ability" to file habeas corpus petitions and "ensure that their cases are handled as they would have been if the Government had not provided constitutionally inadequate process." James Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, does not get more specific than that. Cognizant of the "sensitive diplomatic or national-security concerns" raised by interactions between the U.S. government and the Salvadoran officials who are imprisoning deportees at its behest, he invites the Trump administration to "propose" how it will comply with his order. But his decision underlines the importance of due process, the constitutional requirement that President Donald Trump sought to evade by invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) against alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The named plaintiffs in this case, who are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), "vehemently deny" any affiliation with Tren de Aragua and "claim that they were never able to challenge the accusation before being removed," Boasberg notes. They were "already being transported to the airport and loaded onto planes" bound for El Salvador before Trump published the March 15 proclamation that supposedly justified their removal based on a rarely used, 227-year-old statute that previously had been invoked only during declared wars. They "were not told" where they were going or why. It turned out they were being transferred to El Salvador's notorious Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) under an agreement with that country's government. "These men allege that they were not informed that they had been designated alien enemies or that they could challenge that designation," Boasberg writes. "Since their removal, they have been held incommunicado at CECOT." Boasberg likens this situation to the one that confronts Josef K., the protagonist of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial, who "awakens to encounter two strange men outside his room." After he "realizes that he is under arrest," he "asks the strangers why" but "receives no answer." He is told that "proceedings are under way and you'll learn everything in due course." He again asks why he is being arrested. "Now there you go again," a guard replies. "We don't answer such questions." He assures Josef K. that "there's been no mistake" because "our department" is only "attracted by guilt." Under the Fifth Amendment, Boasberg notes, the government's assertion that it infallibly identifies the guilty "does not suffice." As the Supreme Court confirmed in Trump v. J.G.G., which addressed a temporary restraining order (TRO) that Boasberg issued during an earlier round of the ACLU's litigation, "'it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law' in the context of removal proceedings," meaning "the detainees are entitled to notice and opportunity to be heard 'appropriate to the nature of the case.'" Specifically, the justices said, "AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs." The Court nevertheless vacated Boasberg's TRO, ruling that AEA detainees must file habeas corpus petitions in the jurisdiction where they are held rather than challenge their deportation under the Administrative Procedure Act in the District of Columbia. But Boasberg concludes that his intervention is necessary to vindicate that right for deportees who were denied due process. "We are skeptical of the self-defeating notion that the right to the notice necessary to 'actually seek habeas relief'…must itself be vindicated through individual habeas petitions, somehow by plaintiffs who have not received notice," the Supreme Court said last month in AARP v. Trump. That comment, Boasberg argues, supports his preliminary injunction. "Absent this relief," he warns, "the Government could snatch anyone off the street, turn him over to a foreign country, and then effectively foreclose any corrective course of action." The ACLU says more than 130 people deported before the Supreme Court's order "remain imprisoned at CECOT." Boasberg's injunction applies to a class consisting of "all noncitizens removed from U.S. custody and transferred" to CECOT on March 15 and 16 "pursuant solely to" Trump's proclamation. It therefore excludes people who were deported under separate legal authority. But it includes people who were subsequently transferred to a different facility. Otherwise, Boasberg says, "they would be arbitrarily excluded from that class—even though their underlying injury meriting injunctive relief would remain unchanged." After the Supreme Court's ruling in Trump v. J.G.G., Boasberg notes, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official described "the current parameters of the process the Government believes adequate." It involves "an English-only form that makes no mention of the right to file a habeas petition," coupled with "oral interpretation or assistance" for detainees who do not speak English or cannot read. A detainee then has 12 hours to "express" his "intent to file a habeas petition." If he hits that deadline, he has another 24 hours to file the petition. The Supreme Court subsequently cast doubt on the Trump administration's understanding of due process. AEA detainees "must have sufficient time and information to reasonably be able to contact counsel, file a petition, and pursue appropriate relief," the justices said in AARP v. Trump. "Notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster." Lower courts addressing this question "have uniformly agreed," Boasberg notes. "The amount of time they have deemed constitutionally sufficient to enable detainees to file habeas petitions after receiving notice has ranged from 10 to 21 days—but never as few as 36 hours or even close. Courts have also held that the notice to detainees must be provided in a language they understand [and] must offer enough information for detainees to pursue their right to seek judicial review. At least one court has held that the notice must inform individuals of the 'particular allegations' establishing the Government's case for alien-enemy designation." The plaintiffs in this case "got none of that," Boasberg observes. They did not even benefit from the farcical version of due process that the government now claims is adequate. Several federal judges have rejected Trump's dubious interpretation of the AEA, saying it makes no sense to describe alleged Tren de Aragua members as "natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects" of a "hostile nation or government" that has launched an "invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States." Boasberg does not address that issue. Nor does he reach any conclusions regarding the plaintiffs' status under the AEA. "Perhaps the President lawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act," Boasberg writes. "Perhaps, moreover, Defendants are correct that Plaintiffs are gang members. But—and this is the critical point—there is simply no way to know for sure, as the CECOT Plaintiffs never had any opportunity to challenge the Government's say-so. Defendants instead spirited away planeloads of people before any such challenge could be made. And now, significant evidence has come to light indicating that many of those currently entombed in CECOT have no connection to the gang and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations." A government "confident of the legal or evidentiary basis for its actions has nothing to fear" from respecting due process, Boasberg writes. "It is, after all, 'central to our system of ordered liberty.'" Trump has condemned Boasberg as a "Radical Left Lunatic," a "troublemaker" and "agitator" who "should be IMPEACHED!!!" But it is Trump, who treats the right to due process as an inconvenience that can be overridden by presidential fiat, who is proposing a radical change to our legal system. The post A Federal Judge Orders Relief for Alleged Gang Members Deported and Imprisoned Without Due Process appeared first on
