Judge Boasberg and Trump Justice Department to face off in court as tension mounts in deportation flights fight

CNN — A federal judge will come face-to-face with Justice Department attorneys Friday in the wake of President Donald Trump’s call for his impeachment over how the jurist has handled a challenge to Trump’s use of a sweeping wartime authority to quickly deport some noncitizens. The hearing before US District Judge James Boasberg comes as the he navigates a high-profile showdown with the administration over his orders last weekend that temporarily blocked Trump’s ability to use the Alien Enemies Act – and probes whether the administration immediately flouted those rulings with deportation flights Saturday night. He went on to criticize DOJ for giving him a sworn statement by an official with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations who “repeated the same general information about the flights” and went on to say that Cabinet secretaries “‘are currently actively considering whether to invoke the state secrets privilege over the other facts requested by the Court’s order.’” “The Government cannot proffer a regional ICE official to attest to Cabinet-level discussions of the state-secrets privilege; indeed, his declaration on that point, not surprisingly, is based solely on his unsubstantiated ‘understand,’” he added. Critically, Boasberg, in an escalation of the standoff with DOJ, ordered its attorneys to “show cause” as to how two deportation flights it allowed to continue last Saturday did not violate orders he issued that day temporarily blocking Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport individuals the government has accused of being affiliated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The Justice Department has already appealed Boasberg’s temporary restraining orders to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, but they’ve also asked the judge to completely wipe them away – a request he’s hearing arguments over during the Friday afternoon hearing.