Migration policy: Legal flap for Trump government with deportation flights

The conflict between US President Donald Trump’s government and the judiciary continues to come to El Salvador due to the controversial deportations. In the opinion of a judge, the government has intentionally violated its arrangement with deportation fees to the Central American country. There is an adequate initial suspicion for possible criminal proceedings for disregarding the court against members of the government, said judge James Boasberg.

The decision is a bitter damper for Trump’s government – and is likely to bring it into trouble. The background to the decision is the deportation of around 200 migrants – mostly from Venezuela – to El Salvador in March.

The US government accuses the deported men of being members of criminal ties and had them transferred to the notorious Cecot high-security prison in El Salvador. However, judge Boasberg had previously ordered the deportations to stop for the time being, as long as the legal basis for this was still examined. The planes still lifted off.

Boasberg: Government had plenty of opportunity

The court concludes that there was a sufficient reason to impose the government due to punishable disregard, judge Boasberg wrote in his decision. “The court does not come to this conclusion lightly or hastily; rather, the defendant has had plenty of opportunity to correct or explain their actions.” None of the government’s answers was satisfactory, said Boasberg.

Trump’s government now has the opportunity to explain itself, it said. If this does not happen, the court will hand over the case to the prosecutor’s case, Boasberg announced. The judge had already made himself unpopular with his first decision in the case of Trump. At that time he was publicly against the judge and brought an official survey into the game.

Federal judges can only be removed from the congress of their office – the hurdles for this are very high. However, Trump’s statements caused indignation – even the top judge of the Supreme Courts, John Roberts, therefore agreed.

Controversial law as the basis

In order to justify the deportations to prison, the Trump government relies on a controversial and hardly used law from 1798: The “Alien Enemies Act” allows the president to have people in war periods or at an invasion of “enemy nations” without having regularly detained and deported. The law was applied during the First and Second World War, especially for internment for Germans and Japanese.

In the meantime, the Supreme Court has decided that the Trump government can initially continue with the deportations-but the decision did not refer to the legality of the deportations based on the controversial law, but on procedural issues. The migrants were also made possible to continue to proceed legally against their deportation.

The Trump government nevertheless considered this as a victory and as a confirmation that its procedure was correct in the matter. Richter Boasberg, however, now made it clear that the judgment of the Supreme Court did not disclose the government afterwards from adhering to its original arrangement at the time of the deportations. According to Boasberg, these would also apply if they were later tipped over by an upper instance.