A federal judge in Washington expressed skepticism on Friday about the Trump administration’s policy of using a powerful and rarely invoked wartime statute to summarily deport immigrants from the country.
The judge, James E. Boasberg, suggested at an hourlong hearing that the White House had stretched the meaning of the statute, the Alien Enemies Act, by applying it to scores of Venezuelan immigrants the administration accused of being members of a street gang and flew to El Salvador last weekend with little or no due process.
The act, which was passed in 1798, is supposed to be used only in times of war or during an invasion against people in the United States from a “hostile nation.” Judge Boasberg said he was concerned not only that President Trump has sought to use the law when there was neither an invasion taking place nor a declared state of war, but also that the people the government has sought to deport have no way of contesting whether they are actually gang members.
“The policy ramifications of this are incredibly troublesome and problematic and concerning,” Judge Boasberg said.
The judge also vowed to keep investigating a separate but related issue: namely, whether the Trump administration allowed two flights of immigrants to continue on to El Salvador on Saturday evening after he had instructed officials to return the planes to the United States.
“The government is not being terribly cooperative at this point,” Judge Boasberg said, “but I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order and who was responsible.”
The post Judge Appears Skeptical of Trump’s Use of Wartime Law to Deport Venezuelans appeared first on New York Times.
