Trump Admin Continues To Defy Judge After Sending Migrants To Salvadoran Prison

The judge said the administration couldn't send Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, but the administration claims his oral orders weren't "enforceable."

In a court filing a day after a federal judge demanded more information on over 250 people who were expelled from the United States to a Salvadoran prison under an extreme wartime power, the Trump administration continued to stonewall, insisting the judge had no right to request it.

The administration’s filing on Tuesday adds to an ongoing constitutional crisis in which the Trump administration is claiming extremely broad authority to arrest and remove people from the country without due process, based solely on unproven assertions of gang membership and claims that the gang in question is actually an invading army.

Over the weekend, hundreds of Venezuelan migrants were flown from the United States to El Salvador despite U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issuing an oral order demanding that any planes in the air immediately return to the United States.

The filing on Tuesday claimed that the judge’s verbal orders were “not independently enforceable as injunctions.” The administration also said it was not required to turn around the planes because “the relevant flights [had] left U.S. airspace.”

Boasberg, however, specifically addressed that argument in court Monday, saying his authority did not end “at the airspace’s edge.”