US President Donald Trump demanded Thursday that courts stop blocking his agenda, edging closer to a constitutional showdown after a judge suggested the administration had ignored an order to block summary deportations.
A federal judge, in a strongly worded order, gave the Justice Department until Tuesday to explain why it went ahead with flights to El Salvador of prison-bound Venezuelan migrants, some of whose representatives say they had committed no crime and were targeted only for their tattoos.
Trump, in a scathing attack on the judiciary that would have been unthinkable coming from most presidents, demanded that the Supreme Court intervene.
"It is our goal to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and such a high aspiration can never be done if Radical and Highly Partisan Judges are allowed to stand in the way of JUSTICE," Trump wrote in a post on his online platform Truth Social aimed at Chief Justice John Roberts.
"STOP NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE," Trump wrote in all capital letters.
"If Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court do not fix this toxic and unprecedented situation IMMEDIATELY, our Country is in very serious trouble!"
Roberts, who was nominated by Republican George W. Bush, a day earlier issued a rare rebuke by the country's top justice to remarks of the president after Trump called for the impeachment of the judge who ruled on the deportation case.
"For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision," Roberts said in a brief statement.
"The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."
On Saturday, James Boasberg, the chief judge of the US District Court in Washington, issued an emergency order against the deportation of Venezuelans as they sought legal recourse.
He said that two flights already in the air must turn around. El Salvador's President Nayyib Bukele, who has offered to take in prisoners on the cheap in Latin America's largest prison, responded on social media: "Oopsie... Too late."
In a new order on Thursday, Boasberg said an acting field office director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency had explained that the Trump administration was considering justifying its actions by saying the issue was a matter of "state secrets."
"This is woefully insufficient," Boasberg wrote, saying that "the Government again evaded its obligations."
He said that a regional official in charge of immigration enforcement was not in a position to attest to cabinet-level arguments against a federal court.
He gave the Trump administration until Tuesday to explain why it did not violate his restraining order.
Officials said that 237 Venezuelans were flown to El Salvador, some of them as Trump invoked the rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act to remove alleged members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal gang.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday he had confidence that the deported Venezuelans were gang members but that, even if not, they were illegally in the United States.
A lawyer for one of the men, Jerce Reyes Barrios, said that he was a professional soccer player in Venezuela with no criminal record who applied through legal channels for asylum in the United States after demonstrating against Nicolas Maduro, the leftist president whose legitimacy is rejected by Washington and the opposition.
The lawyer, Linette Tobin, said that US authorities accused him of gang membership based on a tattoo that in fact was associated with his fandom for Real Madrid.
Representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said that Trump was "refusing to accept that we are still a nation of laws and not royal edicts."
Gregg Nunziata, a former Senate aide to Rubio who now heads to Society for the Rule of Law, called Trump's post on the judiciary "a knife pointed at the heart of our Constitution and worthy of impeachment on its own."
With AFP
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