The Trump administration has drawn a line in the sand.
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Posted Zero Hedge
It will not comply with a federal court order demanding due process for 252 Venezuelan migrants deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador last March under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
The Justice Department made that position clear in a new filing, setting up a collision course with U.S. District Judge James Boasberg and a near-certain return to the Supreme Court.
The case has emerged as a defining test of judicial power in Trump’s second term, pitting the executive branch’s immigration authority against the federal courts and their ability to enforce constitutional protections for illegal immigrant gang members.
The Venezuelans were flown to El Salvador in March 2025 despite an emergency order from Boasberg instructing the administration to halt the deportations and turn the planes around mid-flight. That decision triggered an eleven-month legal battle that reached the Supreme Court in April after months of wrangling in the lower courts.
The justices ruled in the government’s favor on its authority to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, but Boasberg, an Obama appointee, doubled down in December, issuing another order directing the government to “facilitate” due process for the migrants who had already been deported. He presented two options: bring the men back to the United States for in-person hearings or facilitate hearings abroad that meet constitutional standards.
The Justice Department rejected both options in its Monday filing.
“In its filing Monday, the Justice Department argued again that the administration is powerless to return the Venezuelan migrants who were summarily deported last year,” reports Fox News. “The department rejected the notion that the U.S. could ‘facilitate’ due process proceedings for the migrants in question as previously ordered by the court, describing the options to do so as either legally impossible or practically unworkable due to national security concerns and the fragile political situation in Venezuela after the U.S. capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro during a raid in Caracas last month.”
Justice Department lawyers argued that returning the migrants is legally impossible and presents national security risks. They cited strained diplomatic relations with Venezuela and the alleged gang ties of the deportees. The filing also dismissed the idea of holding hearings at the U.S. embassy in Caracas, citing the recent capture of Nicolás Maduro and the resulting political instability. The department further contended that the United States lacks jurisdiction to conduct habeas proceedings abroad and that attempting to do so would interfere with delicate diplomatic efforts.
The filing made clear that the administration believes it owes the migrants no additional due process. If Boasberg orders otherwise, Justice Department lawyers said they would immediately appeal and seek a stay from higher courts.
The department maintained that the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act represents a national security decision outside the proper reach of judicial review.
“If, over defendants’ vehement legal and practical objections, the Court issues an injunction, defendants intend to immediately appeal, and will seek a stay pending appeal from this Court (and, if necessary, from the D.C. Circuit),”the Justice Department said in a statement.
Boasberg has attempted to dictate what the executive branch can do on immigration policy, an area where presidential authority is broad and judicial deference is typically the norm. Similar demands for court-mandated due process protocols were absent during the Obama administration, which deported immigrants in record numbers. During those years, the federal government shifted sharply from judicial removals to fast-track, nonjudicial proceedings. By 2012, 75 percent of illegals removed did not see a judge before being deported from the United States, amounting to 313,000 nonjudicial removals in a single fiscal year.
The Trump administration views the current legal fight as an extension of that same presidential authority enjoyed by Barack Obama. It sees Boasberg and other judges issuing immigration orders as rogue actors seeking to seize control of enforcement policy from the executive branch.
F those activist judges and that whiny arsed Rand Paul.
About time the judges see Trump tell them to pound sand. This might even slow down this garbage. Did anyone vote for this retarded judge?
No one votes for federal judges except senators. Didn't your government union school teachers teach you that or were you absent that day?
Funny how non citizens grew u.s. constitutional rights when they have none.
Finally! And we are not ruled by the Supreme Court either which has illegally made a series of horrendous decisions; legalizing slavery, legalizing murder of innocent babies in the womb, legalizing sodomy and queer 'marriage', legalizing election fraud, legalizing the confiscation of private property devoid of public interest, legalizing the false science that carbon dioxide is a noxious gas, legalizing extreme and onerous interpretation of interstate commerce, legalizing Obamacare
FIRE BOASBERG AND TAKE HIS LICENSE!!! #BHOGFY
Trump needs to go full Jacksonian. He should tell this judge and all others.
You made your ruling, now go ahead and enforce it.
Does this brilliant’ Bosburg (intentionally misspelled) clown expect some cops to go to Venezuela and try to round-up every cockroach that was on that plane ?! THEY HAVE DISPERSED throughout the city and countryside !! It’s UNBELIEVABLE how stupid a human being can get ! Bosburg should be led away in a straight jacket ! I bet the Demonocrats are proud of him, maybe as much as Tampon Tim.