US president Donald Trump’s administration is appealing efforts by two judges to investigate whether government officials defied their rulings over the deportation of migrants to El Salvador. The move escalates a confrontation between the executive and judicial branches.
On Wednesday night, the US justice department said it would appeal Washington-based US district judge James Boasberg’s finding that there was probable cause to believe the government had violated his order to return alleged members of a Venezuelan gang who were deported to El Salvador on March 15th under an 18th-century wartime law.
Judge Boasberg said administration officials could face criminal contempt charges.
Also late on Wednesday, US government lawyers asked the fourth US circuit court of appeals to stop US district judge Paula Xinis in Greenbelt, Maryland, from ordering US officials to provide documents and answer questions under oath about what they had done to secure the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a migrant who was wrongly deported to El Salvador.
In both cases, the Trump administration has denied it violated court orders and accused judges of overstepping their authority.
“A single district court has inserted itself into the foreign policy of the United States and has tried to dictate it from the bench,” the justice department lawyers wrote in its filing with the fourth circuit court of appeals. “Emergency relief is needed.”
The Trump administration faces more than 150 legal challenges to its policies. Democrats and some legal analysts say officials in some cases are dragging their feet in complying with unfavourable court orders, signalling a potential willingness to disobey an independent, coequal branch of government.
Administration officials have responded with blunt criticism of Judge Boasberg and Judge Xinis, both of whom were appointed by Democratic president Barack Obama. After Judge Boasberg blocked the deportations of the Venezuelan migrants, Mr Trump called for his impeachment.
That prompted a rare rebuke from US chief justice John Roberts, who said appeals, not impeachments, were the proper response to disagreements with court orders.
The judiciary is not the only US institution to come under pressure. The Trump administration has targeted others that have long cherished their independence from partisan politics, such as universities and law firms.
Either the government or lawyers for the migrants could seek to have the US supreme court review any unfavourable rulings by appeals courts in the cases of Mr Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was removed on March 15th despite an order blocking his deportation to El Salvador, and the 238 alleged Venezuelan gang members.
The supreme court has weighed prior questions in both cases before, and issued rulings that both sides portrayed as victories.
In the case of the Venezuelan migrants, the court on April 7th ended Judge Boasberg’s order blocking deportations under the wartime Alien Enemies Act, but said individuals must be given the chance to challenge their deportations in court before they are removed.
And the supreme court on April 10th told the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Mr Abrego Garcia from El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, but said Judge Xinis’s prior order that the administration also “effectuate” his return was vague and may exceed her authority.
The justice department has said facilitating Mr Abrego Garcia’s return only meant removing any domestic barriers to his return, an interpretation Judge Xinis has said “flies in the face of the plain meaning of the word”.
In its appeal to the fourth circuit, the government lawyers said the judge had no power to order them to do anything more.
“The federal courts do not have the authority to press-gang the president or his agents into taking any particular act of diplomacy,” the lawyers wrote. – Reuters
