Judge eyes contempt hearings over Trump defiance in Venezuelan deportation battle

WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge grilled the Justice Department Thursday over the Trump administration’s apparent defiance of a court order requiring two planes filled with Venezuelan migrants to return to the United States and suggested contempt hearings may be warranted.

Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said Thursday that it seemed the government acted in “bad faith” between the time President Donald Trump issued a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport 137 migrants on March 15 and an emergency hearing later that day.

Media reporting revealed that the first of three flights, headed to an infamous mega prison in El Salvador, left Texas just 26 minutes after the hearing began at 5 p.m., and the second left at 5:45 p.m.

A third flight, deporting migrants under the Immigration and Nationality Act, left 10 minutes after the hearing ended.

The Barack Obama appointee said he could likely find probable cause that the government had knowingly defied his order and suggested he could either order Department of Homeland Security and State Department officials to issue sworn declarations or testify under oath in court.

“If you really believed everything you did that day was legal and would survive a court challenge, you wouldn’t have operated the way you did,” Boasberg told Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign. 

Ensign could not provide Boasberg many details about the administration’s conduct regarding the March 15 flights, repeatedly stating he was not privy to the operational details and invoking attorney-client privileges. 

Boasberg noted that Trump apparently signed the proclamation on March 14, which was not published until 4 p.m. the next day. 

He added that, according to declarations from five plaintiffs in the case who faced immediate deportation, ICE agents began rounding people up the morning of March 15, well before the proclamation was posted. 

“That doesn’t have anything to do with getting procedures in place to remove these people before it was possible to challenge that?” Boasberg asked, noting that it was hard to see the government’s conduct in any other way than rushing to avoid judicial review.

Boasberg scheduled Thursday’s show-cause hearing on Monday after the Justice Department repeatedly refused to provide further details into the Trump administration’s actions that day.

Boasberg indicated he would issue a ruling sometime during the week of April 14.

Boasberg’s first temporary restraining order, issued at 9:40 a.m., blocked the plaintiffs’ removals. He then scheduled an emergency hearing at 5 p.m. to determine if he should grant the migrants’ request to expand the case into a class action.

“Why wouldn’t the prudent thing be to say, ‘let’s slow down here, see what the judge says, he’s already enjoined the removal of five people,’” Boasberg asked. “Why wouldn’t that be the wise, prudent move?”

Ensign said that it was common practice for agencies to prepare for “national security operations” before they were made public and noted that the government fully complied with the first order.

Ensign also pointed to the government’s invocation of the state secrets privilege as further reason he could not fully answer Boasberg’s questions. Ensign did not know whether all the relevant information was classified but argued that its publication would result in “diplomatic consequences.”

Boasberg was unconvinced, saying the government’s invocation was “pretty shakily” done. 

He pushed Ensign to provide any example where the government had invoked the privilege to protect nonclassified material, which he could not do.

Boasberg added that, even if the information were classified, there’s no reason he could not review the material in a secure location, something he regularly did as a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt said that if Boasberg finds probable cause, he should order government officials to testify under oath because their previous declarations provided few specifics.

The case has fast-tracked through the appellate system, with the D.C. Circuit upholding Boasberg’s order on March 26, which was then appealed to the Supreme Court, where it is currently pending.

Trump has railed against Boasberg, arguing that his order was an extreme overreach of his authority as a federal judge and has decried Boasberg’s random assignment to another ongoing case regarding Trump officials using Signal to plan military strikes on Yemen.

Boasberg opened Thursday’s hearing by clarifying that his order was narrow and specifically blocked the government from deporting migrants under the Alien Enemies Act.

His order did not release Tren de Aragua members, nor did it block the administration from carrying out regular deportations under the Immigration and Nationality Act, he said, adding that the administration had carried out such deportations earlier this week.

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