WASHINGTON — A federal judge Wednesday warned of the possibility of “consequences” after the Justice Department pushed back against his request for more information about the deportation flights that took off over the weekend after President Donald Trump invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg had ordered the Trump administration to submit answers to his questions about the timing of the deportation flights and custody handover of deportees, giving the government until noon Wednesday to respond.
The government submitted a filing Wednesday morning asking for a pause of Boasberg’s order to answer his questions, which it contended could expose negotiations with foreign countries “to serious risk of micromanaged and unnecessary judicial fishing expeditions and potential public disclosure.”
“Continuing to beat a dead horse solely for the sake of prying from the Government legally immaterial facts and wholly within a sphere of core functions of the Executive Branch is both purposeless and frustrating to the consideration of the actual legal issues at stake in this case,” the Justice Department wrote in the filing. The lawyers also contended they would need more time to make their legal arguments.
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Boasberg responded a short time later and gave the government an extra 24 hours to respond — but he also expressed frustration.
“To begin, the Court seeks this information, not as a ‘micromanaged and unnecessary judicial fishing expedition,’ but to determine if the Government deliberately flouted its Orders issued on March 15, 2025, and, if so, what the consequences should be,” he wrote.
“The Government’s Motion is the first time it has suggested that disclosing the information requested by the Court could amount to the release of state secrets. To date, in fact, the Government has made no claim that the information at issue is even classified,” he continued, noting that Trump administration officials have already spoken publicly about the flights at issue.
“For example, the Secretary of State has revealed many operational details of the flights, including the number of people involved in the flights, many of their identities, the facility to which they were brought, their manner of treatment, and the time window during which these events occurred. The Court is therefore unsure at this time how compliance with its Minute Order would jeopardize state secrets,” he wrote.
As for the government’s continued claim he did not have the authority to issue his restraining order, Boasberg said the proper procedure for the government is “appellate review, not disobedience.”
He gave the Justice Department until noon Thursday to either answer his questions about the flights or “invoke the state-secrets doctrine and explain the basis for such invocation.”
He had initially ordered the government to answer his questions about the flights by noon Tuesday. The Justice Department declined to answer some of them, saying, “If, however, the Court nevertheless orders the Government to provide additional details, the Court should do so through an in camera and ex parte declaration, in order to protect sensitive information bearing on foreign relations.”
Boasberg agreed and directed Justice Department attorneys to submit under seal the answers to his questions about the deportations that were carried out under the terms of rarely used wartime act by noon Wednesday.
In its response Wednesday, the Trump administration blasted Boasberg for accepting its proposal, which appeared to be put forth grudgingly, and suggested he not take any action until an appeals court rules on its request for a pause on enforcing his order.
“The Court has now spent more time trying to ferret out information about the Government’s flight schedules and relations with foreign countries than it did in investigating the facts before certifying the class action in this case. That observation reflects how upside-down this case has become, as digressive micromanagement has outweighed consideration of the case’s legal issues,” the Justice Department filing said. “The distraction of the specific facts surrounding the movements of an airplane has derailed this case long enough and should end until the Circuit Court has had a chance to weigh in.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi also slammed the judge in a Fox News interview.
“This judge has no right to ask those questions. You have one unelected federal judge trying to control foreign policies, trying to control the Alien Enemies Act, which they have no business presiding over,” Bondi said.
“We will honor what the court says, but we will appeal and we will continue to fight terrorists within our country,” she added.
The legal saga began after Boasberg blocked deportations stemming from the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a rarely used wartime act. On Saturday, he said planes carrying people being deported under the act’s authority must turn around. Planes carrying deportees later touched down in El Salvador, raising questions about whether the government defied a court order.
The government immediately appealed the ruling and said in a filing Tuesday that the order lacked proper jurisdiction “because the presidential actions they challenge are not subject to judicial review.” The administration also argued that it did not violate the order because “the relevant flights left U.S. airspace” before Boasberg’s written ruling.
In the same filing, however, the government declined to provide details Boasberg requested, arguing that the government should “not be required to disclose sensitive information bearing on national security and foreign relations” until a motion to pause was resolved.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case, meanwhile, have urged the appeals court not to block Boasberg’s order. Their clients are five Venezuelan nationals the U.S. government accused of being members of Tren De Aragua, a gang that the Trump administration has declared to be a foreign terrorist organization.
In a proclamation signed Friday and made public Saturday, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, saying the gang “is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.” He directed “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of TdA, are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States” to be immediately deported.
The plaintiffs maintain that Trump’s action is unlawful and that it deprives them of due process rights — including being able to challenge allegations that they are affiliated with the gang.
“On the merits, the invocation of the Act against a gang cannot be squared with the explicit terms of the statute requiring a declared war or invasion by foreign government,” they argued Tuesday in a filing with the appeals court, noting the Alien Enemies Act “has only ever been invoked during a declared war: the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II.”
They also called the implications of the Trump administration’s position “staggering.”
“If the President can designate any group as enemy aliens under the Act, and that designation is unreviewable, then there is no limit on who can be sent to a Salvadoran prison, or any limit on how long they will remain there,” they said.
In its own filing to the appeals court Wednesday, the administration argued it was the judge who overstepped and that his order blocking “the President’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act against a designated foreign terrorist organization linked to the Venezuela government represents an extraordinary intrusion upon the President’s constitutional and statutory authority to protect the Nation from alien enemies.”
It also contended the gang has “de facto control over parts of Venezuela in which it acts with impunity as an effective governing authority,” and that if the United States “can attack non-state actors or entities with military force, surely it can take the lesser step of identifying the same hostile forces within U.S. borders and summarily removing them from the country.”
The appeals court scheduled oral arguments in the case for Monday afternoon.
