Justice Dept. may invoke state secrets privilege in Alien Enemies Act deportation case

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CBS News

Updated on: March 19, 2025 / 2:56 PM EDT


Attorney General Pam Bondi and top Justice Department officials said the government may invoke states secret privilege to block a federal judge from viewing specific information about two deportation flights of alleged Tren de Aragua gang members, court filings Wednesday show.

In a filing excoriating D.C. District Chief Judge James Boasberg for demanding detailed information about the flights, the Justice Department said, "Continuing to beat a dead horse solely for the sake of prying from the Government legally immaterial facts and wholly within a sphere of core functions of the Executive Branch is both purposeless and frustrating to the consideration of the actual legal issues at stake in this case." The filing was signed by Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, as well as top Justice Department officials Emil Bove and Chad Mizelle.

The government argued that Boasberg's demands for detailed information about the two flights from the U.S. to El Salvador Saturday "represent grave usurpations of the President's powers under the Alien Enemies Act and his inherent Article II powers."

The 1798 Alien Enemies Act allows foreigners to be summarily arrested, detained and deported, without the due process protections outlined in U.S. immigration law, including opportunities to see a judge and request asylum. Instead, they may be treated as enemy aliens and processed under America's wartime laws. President Trump invoked the act Saturday and used it to send the two planes to El Salvador.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/justice-dept-alien-enemies-act-state-secrets-privilege-deportation-case/

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Link to FILING (PDF) - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436/gov.uscourts.dcd.278436.37.0.pdf

Um no. Use of the "Alien Enemies Act" with no declared war is already illegal and this other nonsense about "state secrets" just doubles down on the illegal idiocy. Complete waste of taxpayer money, fraudulent misreading of a law, and abuse of the justice system to fulfill a "campaign promise".

[Bayard]

1. Top Secret!

You don't even get to know who we are disappearing without due process!

[bucolic_frolic]

2. But boxes of classified documents were not state secrets. ok. got it. /nt

[GreenWave]

3. Translation: We ain't got nothing on them, but you don't get to know that.

[Eugene]

4. that final ingredient of enforced disappearance

arrest without documentation or accountability

[AZJonnie]

5. Not a lawyer but I rather doubt that this Alien Enemies Act said that the President can unilaterally deport

ANYONE HE WANTS, based purely on his 'word' that they are not legal residents, and not to their country of origin, but rather a notoriously harsh prison in a DIFFERENT country than the one where they are citizens, if he so chooses. I can't see that being part of that law.

[LookoutMtnWriter]

6. Stonewalling

Judge Boasberg should hold the attorneys in contempt and have them escorted to jail.

[vapor2]

7. 100% lawlessness

And Bondi whined about the judge coming in on a SAT.............but nothing about trump providing the order to fly those "gang member" on a late Friday night. These aholes are unstoppable. I would love to leave here but not sure where it is safe any longer