CNN
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Top Justice Department officials told a federal judge on Monday that the Trump administration is invoking the state secrets privilege to avoid giving him information about deportation flights from earlier this month that are at the center of a legal dispute over whether the government flouted his judicial commands.
“The Court has all of the facts it needs to address the compliance issues before it,” Attorney General Pam Bondi and other top DOJ officials wrote in a filing to US District Judge James Boasberg. “Further intrusions on the Executive Branch would present dangerous and wholly unwarranted separation-of-powers harms with respect to diplomatic and national security concerns that the Court lacks competence to address.”
“The information sought by the Court is subject to the state secrets privilege because disclosure would pose reasonable danger to national security and foreign affairs,” the officials wrote in the 10-page filing.
Boasberg is seeking the information to determine whether the government violated a pair of temporary restraining orders he issued on March 15 that temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport individuals the administration has accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
The judge had ordered any flights containing noncitizens being deported pursuant to Trump’s directive to turn around immediately, but it quickly emerged that the administration appeared to have violated his command by allowing two deportation flights to continue the evening of March 15.
Included in the Monday evening filing were declarations from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem who said that disclosing the information sought by Boasberg would harm US national security or foreign relations.
“It is critical to bear in mind that removal operations can be (as they are here) counterterrorism operations, If foreign partners believed that any relevant details could be revealed to third parties, those foreign partners would be less likely to work with the United States in the future,” Rubio said in his declaration. “That impairs the foreign relations and diplomatic capabilities of the United States and threatens significant harm to the national security of the United States.”
Among the questions Boasberg wanted the Justice Department to answer are ones concerning the exact timing of when the two planes took off from US soil and left US airspace that day, as well as the specific times individuals deported under Trump’s proclamation were transferred out of US custody that day.
He told the government last week that it could submit the information under seal or invoke the privilege, though he said if DOJ decides to shield the information, he “is obligated to ‘determine whether the circumstances are appropriate for the claim of privilege.’”
In the filings submitted Monday to Boasberg, the department pushed back strongly on the judge’s continued inquiry into whether the administration violated his orders, saying, “No more information is needed to resolve any legal issue in this case.”
“Whether the planes carried one TdA terrorist or a thousand or whether the planes made one stop or ten simply has no bearing on any relevant legal issue,” the officials wrote. “The need for additional information here is not merely ‘dubious,’ … or ‘trivial,’ … it is non-existent. The Executive Branch violated no valid order through its actions, and the Court has all it needs to evaluate compliance.”
