The Trump administration is involved in “egregious” overreach in the El Salvador deportation case, three political and legal experts have told a judge.
Why It Matters
The standoff between the Trump administration and Washington, D.C., federal Judge James Boasberg has intensified after President Donald Trump called for his impeachment.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts released a rare public statement explaining that federal judges should not be impeached for unpopular decisions with the government. The case raises issues about the impartiality and independence of federal judges.
Newsweek reached out to Judge James Boasberg and Attorney General Pam Bondi via email for comment.
State Secrets Privilege
Boasberg warned Department of Justice (DOJ) officials on March 15 that a group of Venezuelan men should not be deported to El Salvador until he had considered the full facts of the case. The men were deported that same day, and Boasberg has spent two weeks trying to find out if the Trump administration had violated his court order.
He also suggested that the administration may be in contempt of court and expressed frustration at the DOJ’s refusal to answer his questions. He imposed a temporary restraining order preventing any more deportations to El Salvador.
The Trump administration has filed a notice invoking state secrets privilege so that it does not have to answer Boasberg’s questions.
In response, three university professors have filed a friend of the court brief opposing the Trump administration’s state secrets notice. A friend of the court brief is an expert opinion typically offered to a court on behalf of one side in a legal dispute.
It was filed by Heidi Kitrosser, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who specializes in legal issues related to government secrecy; Mark J. Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, Virginia; and Mitchel A. Sollenberger, a professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
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‘Egregious Example of Overreach’
In their filing, Kitrosser, Rozell and Sollenberger said that the courts are entitled to review the Trump administration’s deportation orders and that a claim of “separation of powers” is bogus.
“Perhaps the most egregious example of overreach in the Government’s [state secrets] notice is the naked claim—without any support—that the question before the Court has anything to do with separation of powers,” they wrote.
They also point out that the DOJ has never asserted that any of the details of the deportations are classified, yet the Trump administration is still claiming that it is a state secret.
‘Wholly Unclassified Information’
“The Government has never actually claimed that the information in question is classified,” the filing said.
“This is a critical distinction separating the Government’s claim in this case from all other state secrets privilege cases: neither Amici nor their undersigned counsel have found a single case where the Government attempted to invoke the state secrets privilege to withhold wholly unclassified information.”
What People Are Saying
In their state secrets notice to the court on March 24, Justice Department lawyers wrote: “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.”
What Happens Next
Boasberg must decide whether to accept or reject the government’s state secrets notice. If he refuses, he may ask for more information about the flights and possibly hold various Trump administration officials in contempt of court if they fail to reply.
