The judge maintains the blockage on the deportations of the Trump administration pursuant to the law in war

The Trump administration told a federal judge on Monday evening that he would not have disclosed more information on two flights from Venezuelani migrants that he sent to El Salvador this month despite an order of the court to overturn the planes, declaring that this would endanger the state secrets.

The move has clearly intensified the growing conflict between the administration and the judge – and, by extension, the federal judiciary – in the event that the legal experts fear are precipitate a constitutional crisis.

For almost 10 days, the judge, James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court of Washington, tried to convince the Trump administration to give him information on the two flights in an attempt to determine if the officials allowed them to continue to El Salvador in violation of his order to return to the United States.

But in a challenge patent, the Department of Justice told Judge Boasberg that giving him more information on flights – that the Trump administration maintains were transporting members of a Venezuelan road band called Tren de Aragua – “threatened or prevented future anti -terrorism operations”.

“The Court has all the events he needs to deal with the conformity problems before it,” wrote the Department a deposit. “Further intrusions on the executive branch would present dangerous and totally unjustified damage to separation of wells with respect to the concerns of diplomatic and national security to which the Court has no competence to face.”

The privilege of state secrets is a legal doctrine that can allow the executive branch to block the use of trials in court – and sometimes close entire causes – when it states that arguing these issues in the open court risking to reveal information that could damage national security.

In general, however, the executive branch confidentially provides a detailed description of the evidence sensitive to a judge to demonstrate why it is too sensitive to discuss in an open court. The move of the Trump Administration is partly extraordinary because it refuses to provide information to Judge Boasberg – a former chair judge of the National Security Court of National Security – also privately and in a safe structure for the management of classified information.

In fact, the administration has not even said that the information in question is classified.

Instead, he sent statements from Marco Rubio AND Kristi callsState and national security secretaries, stating that the sharing of information with a court would jeopardize national security and foreign policy, also making secrets to foreign partners to trust the Trump Administration to keep confidential negotiations and operational details and fueling public speculations on the issue.

The stubborn response of the Department of Justice to Judge Boasberg arrived on the same day on which he reaffirmed his initial order, excluding the Trump administration to use a law in war time, the Alien Enemies Act, to summarily expel dozens of Venetian migrants who consider being members of Tren de Aragua.

The judge order He said that the block should remain in place so that migrants can have the opportunity to challenge the accusations of belonging to the band before having flown out of the country in a prison in El Salvador.

In addition, on Monday, a Federal Court of Appeal in Washington has held an audition of almost two hours on the request of the Trump administration to cancel the background order of judge Boasberg, addressing many of the same issues.

The group of three judges did not emit an immediate sentence. But during the interrogation, a lawyer of the Department of Justice recognized that if the court were to reverse the order of judge Boasberg, the administration could immediately resume by transferring people to the Salvadoran prison.

From the moment when Judge Boasberg, the chief judge of the Federal District Court of Washington, entered his original order on pause the deportation flights on March 15, Mr. Trump and his allies they accused him of having passed His authority by intruding the prerogative of the President to conduct foreign affairs.

The question at the center of the case is addressed in the same way to the question if Mr. Trump himself has exceeded ignoring the limits established in the text of the Alien Enemies Act and in the Constitution for when and how deportations can take place in war.

The law, approved in 1798, gives the government a large latitude during an invasion or time of war to summarily gather the subjects of a “hostile nation” which are more than 14 years old and removes them from the country with little or null process.

The administration has repeatedly stated that the Venezuelan migrants in question are members of Tren de Aragua and should be considered subjects of a hostile nation because Mr. Trump claimed to act in the direction of the Venezuelan government.

The White House also insisted that the arrival of dozens of gang members in the United States constitutes an invasion or “predatory incursion” pursuant to the law, which can push the deportation powers into the war of a president even without a declared war.

Lawyers for Venezuelan migrants have argued that the law cannot be used against the members of Tren de Aragua because the gang is not a government and its activities do not amount to an invasion. In particular, The United States Intelligence community has released an evaluation last month. That the band is not under the control of the Venezuelan government, contrary to what Mr. Trump supported.

The lawyers also wondered if many of the migrants Trump have accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua are actually members of the gang. They claimed that Venezuelans should be able to challenge these determinations before having flown out of the country.

When Judge Boasberg initially paused the flights, he said that his decision was based both on the lack of a fair trial that migrants received both on the broadest question about the fact that the use of Trump of the Alien Enemies Act really adapted to the situation.

But in keeping the restrictive order in place, the judge wrote that he had entrusted exclusively on the question of the right trial. He added that he did not need to “resolve the thorny question if the judiciary has the authority to evaluate” the affirmation of Mr. Trump according to which the Alien Enemies Act can be legitimately used against Tren de Aragua as a group.

During the hearing on Monday before the jury for the appeals, two judges seemed to agree on the fact that the migrants that the government wishes to remove pursuant to the law could go to court to challenge if they were actually members of Tren de Aragua.

But it was not clear how those challenges could be.

One of the judges, Patricia A. Millett, appointed democratic, reported skepticism with the position of the government that the panel should remain the restrictive order of judge Boasberg.

He has grilled a lawyer of the Department of Justice, suggesting that if the Venezuelans could be expelled without a fair trial, then anyone – including herself – could simply be declared a threat of national security and fly out of the country. And judge Millett stressed that also German citizens arrested pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act during the Second World War had the opportunity to discuss in the hearings that the law did not apply to them.

“The Nazis received better treatment pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act,” he said.

A second judge, Justin R. Walker, appointed Republican, agreed that migrants could challenge if they were covered by the invocation of Mr. Trump of the law in war time, but seemed to be skeptical in allowing the order of judge Boasberg to remain on the spot for technical reasons.

He repeatedly suggested that if migrants wanted to challenge their removal, they would not have had to do it in Washington, but in places they will be held, like Texas.

The third panel judge, Karen L. Henderson, appointed republican, said almost nothing in the hearing.

The invocation of the Department of Justice of the privileges of state secrets was only his latest effort for the attempts of the Stonewall Boasberg judge to understand if the government had violated his order.

Last week, a few hours before an audition in which they should have discussed the flight, the lawyers of the department moved to cancel the procedure. The same day, they took the even more daring step in an attempt to remove judge Boasberg from the case.

But the invocation of the privilege of state secrets in this context was a new level of aggression.

The Supreme Court recognized for the first time the privilege of state secrets A decision of 1953 This approved the withholding tax every time there is a “reasonable danger” to expose information that should not be disclosed for national security reasons.

After the Bush administration has often invoked the privilege of state secrets to block the causes on topics such as torture and interceptions without guarantee, the Department of Justice in the Obama era new limits on power imposed.

THE politics Asked the Department to reject a request to use the privilege if the officials decide the motivation to do so is “to hide violations of the law, inefficiency or administrative error”, to “prevent the embarrassment” or to block the information “whose release is not reasonably expected to cause significant damage to national security”.

Pam Bondi Prosecutor He told Judge Boasberg in a deposit That it was satisfied that the new invocation of the privilege of the Trump administration was “adequately supported and justified”.

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