Trump admin claims judges oral directive halting Tren de Aragua deportation flight was not enforceable

The Trump administration on Monday brushed off a federal judge seeking to temporarily block the president from using the an 18th century law to deport alleged migrant gang members, claiming his oral directive — as opposed to a written order — was “not enforceable.” Washington, DC, US District Judge James Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order on Saturday trying to halt President Trump from invoking the Alien Enemies Act to target Tren de Aragua members, a ruthless Venezuelan prison gang whose membership in the US grew in the Biden administration. Justice Department attorneys said in a six-page filing that officials had “complied” with that March 15 order — and didn’t remove any of the five Venezuelans who sued the Trump administration over it.“The government did so despite its powerful jurisdictional and other objections to the Court’s unprecedented assertion of judicial power to review the Proclamation,” added the DOJ attorneys before a scheduled hearing later Monday in the DC court.The American Civil Liberties Union, which is repping the five Venezuelans, filed a motion earlier Monday claiming that the Trump administration may have violated the court’s order by flying roughly 250 alleged Tren de Aragua gangbangers to a mega-prison in El Salvador Saturday. Trump’s DOJ countered in their filing that Boasberg issued his injunction at 7:25 p.m.after the extraction flight had been undertaken — and that the judge’s oral order “did not seek to interfere with the President’s Article II powers to conduct military operations overseas” by returning the suspected gangsters.“[T]he written order did memorialize other, narrower oral directives from the hearing,” the Justice Department attorneys noted, adding that “an oral directive is not enforceable as an injunction.”“Written orders are crucial because they clarify the bounds of permissible conduct,” they also said.Boasberg, an appointee of former President Barack Obam...