The Trump Administration Just Disregarded a Court Order to Stop Deportations

A review of breaking news around this fresh constitutional crisis as a follow-up to last week's analysis of Treasury's financial surveillance program and its intersection with the Alien Enemies Act.

Photo by Anthony Garand on Unsplash

The Trump administration has just moved forward with extraordinary measures targeting immigrant communities in flagrant defiance of a court order.

As I noted in my original analysis last week, the Treasury Department's expansion of financial surveillance along the border came "just days before Trump considered invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—a wartime authority that would dramatically expand his executive power to target and remove non-citizens." I warned that while administration officials contended the law's application would focus on members of the criminal gang Tren de Aragua, "immigration attorneys will note the language of both the executive order and the underlying statute contains few limiting principles."

That prediction has now materialized with remarkable speed into a direct confrontation between presidential authority and judicial oversight.

On Saturday evening, Federal Judge James Boasberg issued an unambiguous order temporarily bloc…