At least one judge seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s position.
A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard arguments on March 24 over whether to halt a lower court’s order that prevented the Trump administration from deporting alleged members of a Venezuelan gang under the Alien Enemies Act.
It’s unclear how the court will rule but at least one judge, Judge Patricia Millett, seemed skeptical of the administration’s position.
Judge Justin Walker, meanwhile, asked multiple questions of both sides but seemed sympathetic to the administration’s arguments.
At one point, Millett told Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney Drew Ensign that “Nazis got better treatment” under the Alien Enemies Act than the way the administration treated suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
More specifically, she took issue with the administration not stating that it had provided some kind of hearing for individuals who were subject to removal.
Walker asked multiple questions of Lee Gelernt, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney representing the plaintiffs, and made comments indicating skepticism of Gelernt’s case.
During the hearing, he pressed Gelernt for an example of a court order that survived appeal and stopped an ongoing partially overseas national security operation.
The hearing was held after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, whom Trump has said should be impeached, denied a request by the administration to vacate orders he issued blocking its implementation of Trump’s proclamation that members of Tren de Aragua were subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act.
In his March 24 opinion, Boasberg stated that individuals were “entitled to individualized hearings to determine whether the [Alien Enemies] Act applies to them at all.”
The administration was seeking on March 24 to have the appeals court stop the Boasberg halt on the president’s implementation of the proclamation.
Boasberg’s order, Ensign said during oral argument, “represents an unprecedented and enormous intrusion upon the powers of the executive branch.”
“It enjoins the president’s exercise of his war and foreign affairs powers under the Alien Enemies Act and does so in a manner that purports to direct operations outside the United States’ borders and in a manner that could intrude upon sensitive diplomatic negotiations,” Ensign added.
By Sam Dorman
