Administration’s Details on Deportation Flights ‘Woefully Insufficient,’ Judge Says

In a display of open frustration, a federal judge in Washington told the Trump administration on Thursday to explain in detail why officials had not violated an order he issued last weekend pausing the deportation of scores of Venezuelan immigrants under a rarely invoked wartime statute.

The order by the judge, James E. Boasberg, was the closest he has come to the possibility of holding the administration in contempt.

Judge Boasberg gave the Justice Department until Tuesday to explain itself and lay out clearly why he should find that administration officials had not violated his order stopping the deportation flights under the powerful wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act. Three flights of immigrants were sent to El Salvador on Saturday, two of them under the act’s authority.

Judge Boasberg’s angry order was the latest turn in his nearly weeklong effort to get the administration to tell him — under seal, if needed — what time the two planes departed the United States, what time they left American airspace and what time they landed.

He originally instructed the Justice Department to provide him with that data by noon on Wednesday. He then extended that deadline by another day after department lawyers asked for more time as they considered whether to invoke a rare doctrine called the state secrets privilege in an effort to get out of turning over the information.

On Thursday, the government filed court papers to Judge Boasberg under seal, but hours later he revealed in his order that the papers “repeated the same general information about the flights” that department lawyers had already given him in previous court filings and hearings.

“The government again evaded its obligations,” he wrote, adding that the Justice Department’s filing was “woefully insufficient.”