CNN
—
A federal judge is giving the Justice Department until Wednesday at noon to provide him, under seal, with more information about deportations the Trump administration carried out pursuant to President Donald Trump’s use of a sweeping wartime authority.
The demand from US District Judge James Boasberg comes as he continued on a hurried “fact-finding” mission about the administration’s compliance with his orders last weekend that the government temporarily stop deporting individuals while he considered a legal challenge to Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to quickly remove individuals the government has accused of being affiliated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Among the questions Boasberg said the Justice Department must answer under seal are ones concerning the exact timing of when two planes took off from US soil and left US airspace on Saturday, as well as the specific times individuals deported pursuant to Trump’s proclamation were transferred out of US custody that day.
Boasberg’s order for the sealed answers comes a day after he was stonewalled by a DOJ attorney during a hearing on the matter. Following the proceedings, the judge issued a pair of written orders later that night and on Tuesday demanding the department provide details on the flights.
Also Tuesday, Trump called for the impeachment of Boasberg, an appointee of former President Barack Obama and the current chief judge of the federal trial-level court in Washington, DC.
The Justice Department – via a sworn declaration from a senior ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations official – provided some of the answers Boasberg had sought on Tuesday, including whether one flight that took off shortly after he temporarily ordered any planes carrying the migrants to turn around included any individuals who were being removed “solely on the basis” of the Alien Enemies Act.
“All individuals on that third plane had Title 8 final removal orders and thus were not removed solely on the basis of the Proclamation at issue,” the official, Robert Cerna, said in the sworn statement. “To avoid any doubt, no one on any flight departing the United States after 7:25 PM EDT on March 15, 2025, was removed solely on the basis of the Proclamation at issue.”
But after Attorney General Pam Bondi and other top DOJ officials told the judge in a court filing on Tuesday that “there is no justification to order the provision of additional information, and that doing so would be inappropriate,” Boasberg wasted no time issuing the order for the more details to be handed over by Wednesday afternoon.
Boasberg had first outlined that set of questions during Monday’s hearing, but he gave DOJ attorneys the chance to say whether they preferred to provide answers to them under seal.
In the filing submitted by Bondi and others, the attorneys said the administration would prefer to keep the answers secret “in order to protect sensitive information bearing on foreign relations.”
Court filings are typically signed by the attorneys working on the matter and it is rare to see top DOJ leaders signing onto a routine court response. In addition to Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Principal Acting Associate Deputy AG Emil Bove and chief of staff and Acting Associate Attorney General Chad Mizelle signed on to the filing.
According to an administration official, the show of force is meant to show support for and solidarity with line prosecutors who are working on this case. The judge has suggested the government may have violated his order, which could result in sanctions against government lawyers or even them being held in contempt.
The official says having all of the top leaders sign onto the Justice Department’s arguments shows that they are not trying to leave one prosecutor out to get sanctioned.
Monday’s hearing was scheduled shortly after lawyers representing five individuals challenging Trump’s attempt to use the Alien Enemies Act accused the administration of violating the orders issued by Boasberg on Saturday.
During a separate hearing on Saturday, Boasberg said that the government must turn around any planes carrying out deportations pursuant to Trump’s edict. But a written order issued shortly after the hearing concluded contained no such language about the planes and instead just said the administration was enjoined from removing the migrants subject to the proclamation while his temporary restraining order remained in effect.
As they sought to defend the government against the accusation that it had defied Boasberg, DOJ attorneys – in a filing also spearheaded by Bondi – took the extraordinary step of arguing that the judge’s oral order he issued during a court hearing Saturday afternoon is “is not enforceable.”
“Written orders are crucial because they clarify the bounds of permissible conduct,” the attorneys told Boasberg on Monday.
CNN’s Paula Reid contributed to this report.
