The Trump administration instructed a federal choose on Monday night time that it will not disclose any additional details about two flights of Venezuelan migrants it despatched to El Salvador this month regardless of a court docket order to show again the planes, declaring that doing so would jeopardize state secrets and techniques.
The transfer sharply escalated the rising battle between the administration and the choose — and, by extension, the federal judiciary — in a case that authorized specialists worry is precipitating a constitutional crisis.
For nearly 10 days, the choose, James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Courtroom in Washington, has been making an attempt to get the Trump administration to present him details about the 2 flights in an effort to find out whether or not officers allowed them to proceed on to El Salvador in violation of his order to have them return to america.
However in a patent act of defiance, the Justice Division instructed Decide Boasberg that giving him any additional details about the flights — which the Trump administration maintains have been carrying members of a Venezuelan road gang referred to as Tren de Aragua — would “undermine or impede future counterterrorism operations.”
“The court docket has all the details it wants to deal with the compliance points earlier than it,” the division wrote in a filing. “Additional intrusions on the manager department would current harmful and wholly unwarranted separation-of-powers harms with respect to diplomatic and nationwide safety issues that the court docket lacks competence to deal with.”
The state secrets and techniques privilege is a authorized doctrine that may enable the manager department to dam using proof in court docket — and generally shut down total lawsuits — when it says litigating such issues in open court docket would danger revealing data that would injury nationwide safety.
