The Trump Administration Defies Judge Demanding Basic Details about Those it Is Deporting

Mar 18, 2025

In addition to defying a federal judge’s order to stop the deportation of alleged gang members, Department of Justice lawyers are now refusing to provide information to a federal judge and denying any due process or judicial review of executive actions.

The New York Times reports:

The Trump administration on Monday stonewalled a federal judge seeking answers about whether the government had violated his order by deporting more than 200 people over the weekend, including those officials identified as members of a Venezuelan criminal gang.
The hearing in Federal District Court in Washington escalated a conflict between the White House and the courts that threatened to become a constitutional crisis.
A Justice Department lawyer refused to answer any detailed questions about the deportation flights to El Salvador, arguing that President Trump had broad authority to remove immigrants from the United States with little to no due process under an obscure wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. …
Even before the hearing began, Justice Department officials tried to have it canceled, writing to Judge Boasberg in the late afternoon to tell him there was no point in coming to court since they did not intend to provide him with any additional information about the deportation flights.

The issue isn’t whether these particular people are gang members or not. Our government is asserting the power to grab anyone off the street, put him on a plane, and imprison him in a foreign dictatorship—without providing any evidence or even verifying the victim is not a U.S. citizen.

Under this precedent, no one is safe.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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