Judge Boasberg to weigh Trump contempt in deportation case this week
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered lawyers for the Trump administration and for a class of deported Venezuelan migrants to come to court Wednesday to discuss the case's status and...
By Fox News · Fox News
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered lawyers for the Trump administration and for a class of deported Venezuelan migrants to come to court Wednesday to discuss the case's status and the long-stalled question of whether the administration willfully defied his earlier court order and acted in contempt. The new updates, codified in a minute order on Monday, are almost certain to spark fresh ire from President Donald Trump and his allies in a major immigration fight that has stretched on for more than nine months. At issue is the Trump administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime immigration law, to deport 252 Venezuelan migrants from the U.S. to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador in March. Boasberg had issued an emergency order in March blocking the Trump administration’s use of the law to immediately deport migrants to a third country, and ordered officials to return any planes that had already left US soil. WHO IS JAMES BOASBERG, THE US JUDGE AT THE CENTER OF TRUMP'S DEPORTATION EFFORTS? Despite his order, hundreds of migrants arrived in El Salvador hours later — where they remained until July, when they were removed again from CECOT to Venezuela as part of a broader prisoner exchange that involved the return of at least 10 Americans and permanent U.S. residents detained in Venezuela. Trump officials have argued that the individuals removed were alleged members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. But lawyers for the ACLU and other groups representing the migrants have vehemently disputed that claim, citing several reports from major news outlets that separately concluded that just a handful of individuals deported under the 18th century law had serious criminal records. The Alien Enemies Act has been used three times previously in U.S. history, and most recently during World War II. Boasberg tried for months without success to obtain information about the individuals who were deported to CECOT, and to obtain information about who in…