Judge Boasberg claims Trump response to 'defying' his order to turn planes of deportees around 'woefully insufficient'

In an order issued on Thursday, Judge James Boasberg, who is overseeing the case against the Trump administration over the use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan gang members, claimed that the government "evaded its obligations" and the Justice Department’s latest filing was "woefully insufficient."

Boasberg wrote that in the filing, delivered shortly after Thursday’s deadline, the Government submitted a six-paragraph declaration from the Acting Field Office Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Harlingen, Texas, Field Office "repeated the same general information about the flights" after four paragraphs of identifying information.

"This is woefully insufficient. To begin, the Government cannot proffer a regional ICE official to attest to Cabinet-level discussions of the state-secrets privilege; indeed, his declaration on that point, not surprisingly, is based solely on his unsubstantiated 'understand[ing].'"

Boasberg wrote that the court requires, at a minimum, "an official with direct involvement to swear that deliberations of the privilege’s invocation are ongoing at the level [Robert L.] Cerna attests."

He ordered that the Trump administration, by Friday morning, submit a sworn declaration from a person directly involved in Cabinet-level discussions "regarding invocation of the state-secrets privilege," and that by Tuesday, the Trump administration submits a declaration "indicating whether or not the Government is invoking the privilege" and a brief "showing cause why they did not violate the Court’s Temporary Restraining Orders by failing to return class members removed from the United States on the two earliest planes that departed on March 15, 2025."

Per the Politico, Boasberg had requested that the Trump administration tell him about the timing of the flight, to find out whether his order was defied. The timing of the flights has come into question after Boasberg issued an order over the weekend blocking flights from taking off and saying in court to turn flights that were in the air around. The Trump administration has said that it complied with the written order, and the planes had already been in the air before it was published.

Attorneys for the Trump administration will appear in court before Boasberg on Friday afternoon, and before the appeals court on Monday.