The TOI Correspondent from Washington: In an escalating executive v judiciary battle that began at 2 am on Saturday, a federal judge directed the US government to turn around flights carrying illegal immigrants that were already in the air after President Trump invoked a 1798 law to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.
Judge James Boasberg, chief judge in the nation’s capital, blocked Trump administration officials from deporting five Venezuelans, later expanding it to all deportees, under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act proclamation that the US President invoked on Friday, saying they could face persecution and worse in their home country.
The judge said he heard that “flights are actively departing” and ordered officials to turn around those already airborne. Two flights heading to Venezuela and El Salvador are reported to have turned back.
In an extraordinary outburst echoing the charges against a self-deporting Indian scholar Ranjani Srinivasan, who was described as a terrorist sympathiser, a Trump administration official then accused the judge of supporting terrorists. “Tonight, a DC trial judge supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans…. This order disregards well-established authority regarding President Trump’s power, and it puts the public and law enforcement at risk,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
The Alien Enemies Act deployed by Trump has been used only three times before to bar citizens of hostile enemy governments against the US, the last time during World War II when Washington incarcerated more than 100,000 US citizens of Japanese and Italian origin. The White House in fact invoked the act on Friday in an effort to get around legal hurdles and surreptitiously fly out deportees, but alert civil liberties activists thwarted the move by moving the court late at night.
The administration said it will appeal the ruling, among several relating to immigration and a raft of other issues that have gone against it, leading to frustration on the part of the President and his associates about “activist judges” who they say need to be impeached for thwarting executive decisions.
“We must impeach judges who are grossly undermining the will of the people and destroying America. It is the only way,” Elon Musk, one of several Trump acolytes unloading on so-called woke and liberal judges, said. Such judges and their family members are being doxxed by MAGA activists with names and details of their alleged association with Democrats being revealed online.
More than half-dozen rulings involving immigration reforms, federal funding freezes, and government lay-offs and restructuring have been stopped by judges, many of whom are now being described as “Obama judges” and “Biden judges” because they were appointed during Democratic administrations. But judges appointed by Presidents Reagan, Bush, and even Trump have ruled against actions by the current dispensation.
