Two prominent legal groups asked a federal judge Monday to force officials in the Trump administration to explain under oath whether they violated the judge's court order temporarily barring deportations by removing more than 200 people from the U.S. after the order was issued.
The request was the latest salvo in a high-stakes legal fight that began when President Donald Trump invoked a rarely used 1798 wartime law to remove immigrants over the weekend. It also marked an escalation in the battle over whether the Trump administration is flouting court orders that blocked some of his aggressive moves in the opening days of his second term.
Prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center on Sunday in Tecoluca, El Salvador.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security officials claimed Monday a doctor from Lebanon who was deported over the weekend despite having a U.S. visa “openly admitted” to attending the funeral of a Hezbollah leader as well as supporting him.
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The department’s statement, posted on social media, provides a possible explanation for the deportation of Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, whose removal from the U.S. sparked widespread alarm, especially after a federal judge ordered that she not be sent back until there was a hearing.
Government lawyers claimed customs officials did not get word in time before Alawieh was sent back to Lebanon.
Alawieh was granted the visa March 11 and arrived at Boston Logan International Airport on Thursday, according to a complaint filed on her behalf by a cousin in federal court. Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist, was to start work at Brown University as an assistant professor of medicine.
Pedestrians make their way past a building housing the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University on Jan. 30, 2019, in Providence, R.I.
On Saturday night, District Judge James E. Boasberg ordered the administration not to deport anyone in its custody over the newly-invoked Alien Enemies Act, which has only been used three times before in U.S. history, all during congressionally-declared wars. Trump issued a proclamation that the law was newly in effect because of what he claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua.
Trump's invocation of the act could allow him to deport any noncitizen he says is associated with the gang without offering proof or even publicly identifying them. The plaintiffs filed their suit on behalf of several Venezuelans in U.S. custody who feared they'd be falsely accused of being Tren de Aragua members and improperly removed from the country.
Told there were planes in the air headed to El Salvador, which agreed to house deported migrants in a notorious prison, Boasberg said he, and the government, needed to move fast.
"You shall inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States," Boasberg told the government's lawyer Saturday night.
According to the filing, two planes that took off from Texas' detention facility when the hearing started more than an hour earlier were in the air at that point, and they apparently continued to El Salvador. A third plane apparently took off after the hearing and Boasberg's written order was formally published at 7:26 pm eastern time.
El Salvador's President, Nayib Bukele, on Sunday morning tweeted "Oopsie … too late" above an article referencing Boasberg's order and announced that more than 200 deportees arrived in his country. The White House communications director, Steven Cheung, reposted Bukele's post with an admiring GIF.
Prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center on Sunday in Tecoluca, El Salvador.
Later Sunday, a widely-circulated article in Axios said the administration decided to "defy" the order and quoted anonymous officials who said they concluded it didn't extend to planes outside U.S. airspace. That drew a quick denial from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said in a statement "the administration did not 'refuse to comply' with a court order."
Leavitt also said the administration believed the order was not "lawful" and it is being appealed.
After Boasberg scheduled a hearing Monday and said the government should be prepared to answer questions over its conduct, the Justice Department objected, saying it could not answer in a public forum because it involved "sensitive questions of national security, foreign relations, and coordination with foreign nations."
Boasberg denied the government's request to cancel the hearing, which led the Trump administration to ask that the judge be taken off the case.
He had scheduled a hearing Friday for further arguments, but the two organizations that filed the initial lawsuit, the ACLU and Democracy Forward, urged him to force the administration to explain in a declaration under oath what happened.
As the courtroom drama built, so did international fallout over the deportations to El Salvador. Venezuela's government on Monday characterized the transfer of migrants to El Salvador as "kidnappings" that it plans to challenge as "crimes against humanity" before the United Nations and other international organizations. It also accused the Central American nation of profiting off the plights of Venezuelan migrants.
