Dem
47
GOP
53
Back in March, Donald Trump invoked the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts to hastily send 130 immigrants to a gulag in El Salvador. A lawyer for the men went to court to stop the deportations. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, a Barack Obama appointee who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, ruled that the men were entitled to due process to see if they had indeed committed any offenses that would subject them to deportation. Boasberg believed that the law did not grant DHS the power to arrest and deport anyone the Department wanted to without a judge ruling that the person had indeed committed some kind of crime. He also ordered that the deportations in progress be stopped and the planes turned around and return to the U.S. The DHS defied his orders and when the prisoners arrived in El Salvador, they were met by a DHS camera crew to record their arrival as a publicity stunt. Almost immediately, Boasberg started a process to find out which officials had been informed of his order and which ones defied it. All the administration did was stonewall.
Boasberg was not amused. After months of their delaying tactics, he scheduled a hearing for today to see whether any government officials knowingly and intentionally violated his order to have the planes come back and not land in El Salvador. The administration's response to the planned hearing was to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. to block the hearing. On Friday, a divided three-judge panel paused the hearing. In favor of pausing it were Judges Neomi Rao and Justin Walker, both of whom are Trump appointees who were narrowly confirmed by the Senate along party lines. Opposing the pause was Judge Julianna Michele Childs, a Biden appointee who was confirmed 64-34.
Although the hearing will not take place today as scheduled, Boasberg will not be silenced. On Friday, he noted: "This inquiry is not some academic exercise. Approximately 137 men were spirited out of this country without a hearing and placed in a high-security prison in El Salvador, where many suffered abuse and possible torture, despite this Court's order that they should not be disembarked. The question the Court must now answer is whether this occurred via contumacious conduct by Government officials." To be continued. (V)