Former prosecutor: Trump admin distinction between judge's verbal, non-verbal orders 'completely silly’
Former federal prosecutor Shan Wu slammed the Trump administration's decision to violate a judge's order that blocked the removal of undocumented Venezuelan immigrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act after deportation flights were carried out over the weekend.
The flights, which U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the administration to turn around, transported hundreds of alleged Tren De Aragua (TdA) gang members to El Salvador.
“This distinction between verbal and nonverbal is just completely silly,” Wu said Monday evening during an appearance on CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins.”
“I mean, think about it. If I‘m in court, I ask a question to the witness, objection, judge has sustained and I just keep asking the questions because, ‘Hey, you didn‘t write it down yet.’ That‘s just complete nonsense to make that distinction,” he added.
Attorney General Pam Bondi argued that the verbal order did not carry the same weight as a written one. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also pushed back on the notion, saying flights were already underway when the ruling hit the court docket.
“The Administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order. The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory," she wrote Sunday on social platform X. "The written order and the Administration’s actions do not conflict."
“Moreover, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear — federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over the President’s conduct of foreign affairs, his authorities under the Alien Enemies Act, and his core Article II powers to remove foreign alien terrorists from U.S. soil and repel a declared invasion,” the press secretary added.
Boasberg issued an oral order on Saturday to turn around the planes at approximately 6:45 p.m. EDT and the instructions were posted to the court’s docket at 7:26 p.m. EDT, according to legal documents.
“Based on publicly available information, it appears that there were at least two flights that took off during the hearing but landed even after this Court’s written Order, meaning that Defendants could have turned the plane around without handing over individuals,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote in a court filing.
ACLU and Democracy Forward sued the Trump administration over the weekend in an effort to block the president from invoking the Alien Enemies Act against five Venezuelan individuals who were in custody.
The civil rights organization has also filed a case against the Trump administration over his executive action to end birthright citizenship in addition to a lawsuit challenging the dismissal of federal probationary workers.
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