Trump administration defends deportations, as Chief Justice slams impeachment call

WASHINGTON - The Trump administration on March 18 defended the deportation of Venezuelans after a judge temporarily banned removing people from the United States under an 18th-century law, as the president’s call for the judge to be impeached drew a rebuke from the US Supreme Court’s chief justice.

US District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, DC on March 15

imposed a two-week halt to deportations

under a proclamation by President Donald Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to declare that the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua was conducting irregular warfare against the US.

The judge on March 17 asked Justice Department lawyers to answer questions on when exactly Mr Trump’s proclamation took effect and when the deportation flights to El Salvador took off, amid concerns that the Republican president is further pushing the boundaries of executive power and setting up a potential constitutional clash with the judiciary.

In a court filing on March 18 responding to Judge Boasberg’s request, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) official Robert Cerna said three planes carrying deportees departed for El Salvador on March 15 after Mr Trump’s order was posted on the White House website that afternoon.

Only one of those flights departed

after Judge Boasberg’s two-week ban hit the public court docket at 7.25pm on March 15, Ice’s Mr Cerna wrote in a sworn declaration. Mr Cerna said everyone aboard that plane had separate removal orders, and thus were not deported under the Alien Enemies Act alone.

Justice Department lawyers representing the Trump administration wrote that the earlier flights had departed before the judge’s written order was issued, and that spoken orders the judge had issued in court before the written notice hit the docket were not enforceable.

“There was no violation of the Court’s written order (since the relevant flights left US airspace, and so their occupants were ‘removed’, before the order issued),” the lawyers wrote.

Earlier on March 17, Mr Trump called for Judge Boasberg’s impeachment, describing the appointee of Democratic former president Barack Obama as a far-left “troublemaker and agitator.”

In an extraordinary statement, US Chief Justice John Roberts rejected the idea that impeachment is the answer for a disagreement with a jurist’s rulings.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Justice Roberts said, in a statement issued by the US Supreme Court.

“The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Judge Boasberg, a former prosecutor who was previously appointed by Republican president George W. Bush to serve as a judge on a local Washington, DC, court, was confirmed by the US Senate in 2011 by a 96-0 vote. Mr Trump’s current Secretary of State, Mr Marco Rubio, was among the senators who voted to confirm him.

Mr Trump’s post on Truth Social marked the first time during his second term as president that he has called for a judge’s impeachment.

Congressional Republicans, billionaire Elon Musk, and other Trump allies have called for the impeachment of federal judges or attacked their integrity in response to court rulings that have slowed the administration’s moves.

Key members of the US federal judiciary warned last week of a rising number of threats directed at their colleagues, and described calls to impeach judges over their rulings as “concerning.” REUTERS