(Bloomberg) — A federal judge admonished a Justice Department lawyer for failing to obey his oral order last weekend to have the US government halt deportation flights of alleged Venezuelan gang members who ended up in a prison in El Salvador.
US District Judge James Boasberg delivered a tongue lashing Friday to a lawyer he had directed six days earlier to convey to government officials an order to turn the planes around “immediately.”
“The government is not being cooperative at this point,” Boasberg said at a court hearing in Washington. “I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order and who ordered this.”
The testy exchange came during arguments over whether Boasberg should extend a temporary block he imposed March 15 on the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — a wartime law used only three times in US history — to remove alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
The hearing is certain to deepen Boasberg’s rift with President Donald Trump, who has called him a “radical left” judge. Trump called for the veteran jurist’s impeachment, prompting a rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts. The case has attracted widespread attention as the Trump administration pushes back at courts that have been halting some of his policies.
Boasberg, the Washington court’s chief judge, grilled Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign over whether he understood his oral order last weekend, when he said “any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States.”
The judge asked if Ensign understood that the order was effective immediately.
“I understood your intent was that you meant that to be effective at that time,” Ensign said. He said that at the March 15 hearing he “didn’t have any information from the government as to the status of those flights” and he was “unable to secure” it.
In court filings this week, the Justice Department argued that Boasberg’s oral order wasn’t binding. A written order, issued less than an hour later, didn’t mention the judge’s directive to return the flights.
The judge didn’t rule Friday on a request by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Democracy Forward Foundation to extend a temporary halt on using the Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected gang member. The lawyers sued on behalf of five men who feared deportation under the law.
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