It appears that President Trump and his minions may have knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally disobeyed an order of a U.S. District Judge regarding the deportation of hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador.
Trump was rushing to fly the immigrants, who are suspected of being members of a Venezuelan gang that Trump has labeled a “terrorist” group, to El Salvador, where they would be jailed by a regime that has a reputation for torture and other human-rights abuses and denial of due process of law, trial by jury, and other procedural protections found here in the United States.
D.C. federal judge James E. Boasberg issued a judicial order barring the deportations and ordered any plane carrying such immigrants to turn around and return to the United States.
United States District Court Judge James E. Boasberg.
The planes proceeded to land in El Salvador, where the immigrants were immediately taken into custody, had their heads shaved, and incarcerated, notwithstanding the fact that they were never convicted of any criminal offense in the United States.
The question is: Had the planes already landed and had the immigrants already been handed over to El Salvador officials before Trump and his minions became aware of the judge’s order? Or did they know about the order and simply ignore it?
If Trump and his minions simply decided to ignore the order, the road to complete dictatorship on the part of President Donald J. Trump will now be wide open.
We already know that Congress is not interfering with Trump’s executive decree-laws, especially when it comes to raising taxes on the American people in form of tariffs, not to mention the destruction of their natural, God-given right of freedom of trade.
But the assumption has always been that Trump and his minions would comply with orders of the federal judiciary, which is how our constitutional system works. If Trump has now decided that he, not the judiciary, is the final decider of the constitutionality of his actions, then what other obstacles are there to his complete dictatorship?
This would not be the first time that Trump will have violated a federal court order. A professor at Brown University, Dr. Rasha Alawieh, had a valid visa as well as a court order prohibiting her expulsion from the United States. Ignoring the court’s order, last week U.S. officials put her on a plane to Paris, presumably on her way to her home country of Lebanon.
Trump is using a 1798 law to argue that he has the “wartime” authority to deport immigrants. His argument, of course, is patently ridiculous but that is a separate issue. The issue at hand is that under our system of government, it is the judicial branch that is the ultimate decider of what is constitutional and what isn’t. When the judicial branch determines that Trump’s justifications are constitutionally faulty, he must comply. If Trump believes that a U.S. District Judge has ruled erroneously, then he can appeal to the Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. What he cannot do under our system of government is knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately violate a court order simply because he thinks it is wrongly decided.
In an obvious attempt to intimidate the federal judiciary, Republican members of Congress are now threatening impeachment proceedings against Judge Boasberg and other federal judges who attempt to interfere with Trump’s actions. They bring to mind President Franklin Roosevelt’s infamous court-packing scheme in the 1930s, when the Supreme Court was declaring much of FDR’s socialist and fascist economic program unconstitutional. FDR proposed a plan by which he would be able to pack the court with statist lawyers who would validate his unconstitutional actions. Interestingly, the American people rose up against Roosevelt, causing Congress to reject his court-packing scheme.
What can and should federal judges do to federal officials who violate their orders? Fines wouldn’t be effective because U.S. officials would simply use U.S. taxpayer money to pay them. That leaves jail time, which is precisely what these federal judges should impose. They couldn’t order the president to be jailed but they could and should order jail time for lower-level federal officials who have violated their judicial orders. Of course, there is a good possibility that Trump would order his minions to ignore the judge’s contempt orders. What then? How do federal judges enforce their judgments of contempt? As I say, a Trump dictatorship would be complete. There would be no effective restraints on his dictatorial power.
Perhaps it’s worth mentioning that one of Trump’s minions, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, shared a social media post by El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele that mocked Judge Boasberg’s order. The post stated, “Oopsie … Too late.” Perhaps it is worth mentioning that El Salvador’s constitution prohibits a president from serving two consecutive terms, which is precisely what El Salvador’s “oopsie” president is doing. I wonder if Trump is asking him how he pulled that off.
