DOJ again refuses to share info with judge on Venezuelan deportation flights

The Justice Department (DOJ) once again rebuffed a federal judge’s demands to provide a rationale for why it was declining to provide information about deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants.

The Tuesday filing escalates the battle between the Trump administration and Judge James Boasberg after he convened a hearing to determine whether officials violated his order by continuing deportation flights he ordered to be halted.

After a remarkable exchange Monday evening in which a DOJ attorney said he was “not authorized” to provide more information on the flights, Boasberg ordered the Justice Department to detail what legal authorities it was relying on in declining to provide evidence it complied with his order.

“The Government maintains that there is no justification to order the provision of additional information, and that doing so would be inappropriate,” the Justice Department wrote in the filing Tuesday.

It went on to call the flight information “neither material nor time sensitive” and said the information should only be shared privately within the judge's chambers “in order to protect sensitive information bearing on foreign relations.”

The Trump administration has been arguing that it complied with Boasberg’s written order on halting deportations. However, Boasberg said the migrant flights should have been turned around or halted in a verbal order he issued 45 minutes earlier.

The Justice Department has argued it did not have to comply with Boasberg’s oral order even though any ruling given from the bench is legally binding.

“There was no violation of the Court’s written order (since the relevant flights left U.S. airspace, and so their occupants were removed, before the order issued), and the Court’s earlier oral statements were not independently enforceable as injunctions,” the Justice Department wrote in the filing.

Boasberg has temporarily barred the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans connected with the Tren de Aragua gang. The wartime power allows for the removal of any citizen of an enemy nation without a hearing, sparking concern it could be used for widespread deportation of Venezuelans with little review.

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued over the move, but the organization also raised concerns the government violated Boasberg’s order, sharing flight information indicating the government refused to turn around its planes.

Outside of the courtroom, White House officials have made a number of statements indicating they disregarded Boasberg or feel he has no authority over the case despite his role as a federal judge.

“The president will always follow the law, but this judge was too slow. We played a little game of ‘catch me if you can,’ and guess what, the judge wasn’t able to catch us on this one,” White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said on NewsNation’s “Morning in America.”

The Trump administration has appealed the judge's orders while simultanously pushing to have the case reassigned.

1d 1:45 PM ET ago

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