Trump administration filing on deportation flights ‘woefully insufficient’, says judge

A US federal judge said the government “evaded its obligations” to answer his questions about last weekend’s deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members.

“This is woefully insufficient,” wrote James Boasberg, the top federal judge in Washington DC, as he gave justice department lawyers a new deadline to submit information about the removal of Venezuelans to El Salvador.

Government attorneys provided a six-paragraph declaration from an immigration official, but they did not supply the flight information the judge requested.

Last Saturday, Judge Boasberg ordered the government to halt the deportation flights, but the White House said it was too late.

US President Donald Trump accused the judge in a social media post of attempting to usurp White House authority.

“He is a local, unknown Judge, a Grandstander, looking for publicity, and it cannot be for any other reason, because his ‘Rulings’ are so ridiculous, and inept,” he posted on Truth Social.

In the government responses they said they needed more than 24 hours to carefully consider whether “to invoke the state secrets privilege”, which allows federal authorities to withhold sensitive national security information in lawsuits.

But Judge Boasberg appeared frustrated by that defence.

He noted that the declaration from a regional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official in Thursday’s court filing repeated previously shared information.

“To begin, the Government cannot proffer a regional ICE official to attest to Cabinet-level discussions of the state-secrets privilege; indeed, his declaration on that point, not surprisingly, is based solely on his unsubstantiated ‘understand[ing],'” he wrote.

The judge initially gave a deadline of Wednesday, before extending it to Thursday. Now he has given the Trump administration until Friday morning to provide a sworn declaration from a cabinet-level official about invoking state-secrets privilege.

Trump this weekend invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act and deported more than 200 Venezuelans, alleging almost all were members of the gang Tren de Aragua.

An immigration attorney working on behalf of one of the deported men told a court on Thursday that her client was a professional soccer player in Venezuela without a criminal record, CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner, reported.

The man, Jerce Reyes Barrios, had applied for asylum to escape political persecution, his attorney argued, saying that he was falsely accused of being connected to Tren de Aragua because of a tattoo on his arm.

The attorney said the tattoo honoured the football team Real Madrid.

The flights – which Mr Barrios and others were aboard – were halted by Judge Boasberg verbally over the weekend. Any flights currently in the air were to be turned back.

But the White House said the planes were already in international airspace, arguing that the judge’s order was therefore invalid.

On Monday, Judge Boasberg asked to hear from the Trump administration’s lawyer about why the flights had not returned to the US.

He will also hold a previously scheduled hearing on the use of the Alien Enemies Act on Friday.