Breaking: Boasberg Issues Bombshell Overnight Orders, Forces Violent Illegals from El Salvador Super Prison to Be Returned to US... at Taxpayers' Expense
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, the Washington, D.C.-based federal judge whose clashes with President Donald Trump’s administration have often made headlines, made the front page again on Thursday night with orders to return deported Venezuelan migrants back to the U.S.
The return flights are for those deported via the CECOT prison in El Salvador, where the individuals had been taken after being removed under the Alien Enemies Act.
According to The Associated Press, Boasberg’s order not only gives them a route to challenge their removal from the United States due to being designated members of the Tren de Aragua gang, but to challenge the use of the Alien Enemies Act, as well.
Boasberg, an Obama appointment, used his decision Thursday night to criticize the administration’s response to another order of his which would give the 137 individuals affected to challenge their removal from the United States.
“Apparently not interested in participating in this process, the Government’s responses essentially told the Court to pound sand,” Boasberg said in his ruling.
The order says that individuals removed to a third country both a boarding letter and airfare to return to the United States. The government could, he ruled, detain them when they returned.
His order said it was up to the administration to “remedy the wrong that it perpetrated here and to provide a means for doing so.”
“Were it otherwise, the Government could simply remove people from the United States without providing any process and then, once they were in a foreign country, deny them any right to return for a hearing or opportunity to present their case from abroad,” Boasberg wrote.
It’s unclear what the Trump administration’s next steps would be, although White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson immediately criticized the ruling.
Boasberg’s decision, Jackson said, was “an absurd, unlawful ruling from a far-left judicial activist trying to undermine the President’s lawful authority to carry about deportations.”
“Americans elected President Trump based on his promise to deport criminal illegal aliens and Make America Safe Again,” Jackson said.
“Boasberg has no right to stop the will of the American people, and this will not be the final say on the matter.”
It would not be the first time that one of Boasberg’s decisions has gone to an appeals court, including in rulings involving the Alien Enemies Act.
Last August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 against Boasberg in his attempt to hold members of the Trump administration in criminal contempt for deporting Venezuelan migrants to CECOT.
“The district court’s order raises troubling questions about judicial control over core executive functions like the conduct of foreign policy and the prosecution of criminal offenses,” Judge Gregory Katsas wrote in his decision regarding the move, calling the dispute “an extraordinary, ongoing confrontation between the Executive and Judicial Branches.”
“[T]he government is plainly correct about the merits of the criminal contempt, and our saying so now would prevent long disputes between the Executive and the Judiciary over difficult, contentious issues regarding the courts’ power to control foreign policy or prosecutions, or to impose criminal sanctions for violating injunctions entered without jurisdiction.”
If the case does not go to a higher court and get struck down, however, it could have serious implications for the alleged Tren de Aragua members deported via CECOT.
Lee Gelernt, who is an attorney for the challengers, said that he was in touch with a handful of the individuals transferred to via CECOT who had made it to a third country after being removed to Venezuela. They said they wished to return to the United States to challenge their removal.
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