Justice Dept. may invoke state secrets privilege in Alien Enemies Act deportation case [View all]
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/
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".