Washington — A federal judge on Thursday said the Justice Department “evaded its obligations” with a “woefully insufficient” response to his demand for more information about deportation flights that are at the center of a growing legal stand-off between the Trump administration and the courts.
Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge in the federal district court in Washington, D.C., demanded on Saturday that two deportation flights turn around in midair and return to the U.S. — an order the Trump administration did not follow, saying the flights were outside of U.S. airspace and therefore outside of the judge’s jurisdiction.
The flights carried more than 200 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador, with the government relying on a wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport them. The law gives the president broad authority to expel foreign nationals during wartime. Boasberg blocked the administration from invoking that authority on Saturday.
In response to the government’s failure to comply with his order, Boasberg directed the government to answer a number of questions regarding the flights, including what time the two planes departed from U.S. soil, their points of departure, what time they left U.S. airspace, when they landed and when the deportees were transferred out of U.S. custody.
Boasberg gave government attorneys a deadline of noon on Thursday to respond. The judge wrote in an order later in the afternoon that the government’s response was filed after the deadline and featured only the sworn declaration of an acting ICE official who did not provide any new information in the case.
“This is woefully insufficient,” Boasberg wrote.
In his order Saturday, Boasberg blocked not just the deportation of the plaintiffs, but of all potential deportees under the Alien Enemies Act. That order set off a back-and-forth between the judge and the Justice Department over whether the administration knowingly defied his directive to halt the deportations and turn the planes around.
On Thursday, the judge ordered the government to brief him by next Tuesday on why the failure to return the planes to the U.S. did not violate his temporary restraining order. He also demanded a declaration from “an official with direct involvement” in Cabinet-level discussions over invoking a legal mechanism known as the state secrets privilege. Boasberg set a deadline of 10 a.m. Friday for that declaration.
On Wednesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi and top Justice Department officials said the government may invoke the state secrets privilege as justification for withholding information about the flights from Boasberg. A Justice Department spokesperson said the agency “continues to believe that the court’s superfluous questioning of sensitive national security information is inappropriate judicial overreach.”
While the government has not provided Boasberg with the details he has requested, CBS News has obtained an internal government list of the names of the Venezuelan men the Trump administration deported to El Salvador as part of the secretive operation on Saturday. The men were taken to a notorious Salvadoran prison.
In a sworn statement submitted to Boasberg on Thursday, an immigration attorney told the court that one of the deported men is a professional soccer player in Venezuela with no criminal history who was falsely linked to Tren de Aragua. The attorney argued that the man, Jerce Reyes Barrios, was accused of being connected to the gang in part because of a tattoo on his arm. The attorney said the tattoo was based on the logo for the Real Madrid football club.
Other court filings challenging the deportations allege troubling conditions during last weekend’s flights and preparations. Plaintiffs’ attorneys argued there was “chaos on the plane,” “taunting” from officers, dangerous heat on board on tarmac, “crying and frightened” deportees and media prestaged to chronicle their arrival and departure.