Washington, United States:
US President Donald Trump denied on Friday to sign a proclamation that called on a 200-year law to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members who were sent to the prison in El Salvador.
His trivialization of his role in the affair came only a few hours after a federal judge called Trump's use of the law 'incredibly difficult'.
Last weekend Trump called on the rare Wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport 238 men whose administration claimed they were members of the Venezuelan gang of Tren De Aragua and to send them to a maximum safety prison in El Salvador.
In a statement at the time, the Pers Secretary of the White House wrote that Trump “signed a proclamation that the Alien Enemies Act called” and the document also appears in the federal register with Trump's signature on it. But on Friday, Trump suggested that his State Secretary had more to do with the case and told reporters: “I don't know when it was signed because I didn't sign it. Other people have treated it.”
“Marco Rubio did a great job and he wanted them out and we go,” said Trump.
Earlier in the day, a federal judge said that Trump's use of the little known law to deport the alleged gang members was “incredibly difficult”.
During a hearing on Friday, James Boasberg, the main judge of the American court in Washington, asked the legality of the use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA) to send the Venezuelan migrants to the prison in El Salvador.
“The policy statements of this are incredibly difficult and problematic and worrying,” said Boasberg.
He noted that the only earlier use of the AEA “in the war of 1812, the First World War and the Second World War was, when there was no doubt, there was a declaration of war and who was the enemy.”
Troublemaker and agitator
Last weekend Boasberg published an emergency order against deportation of the Venezuelans and said that two flights that had to be reversed in the air.
The Ministry of Justice has claimed that the aircraft were in international airspace when the judge issued his written order that ordered them to return and his jurisdiction no longer applied.
The episode earned the IRE of Trump and the Republican President called on Tuesday for Boasberg's accusation, in which the judge burned a 'troublemaker and agitator'.
Those comments from Trump attracted a rare public reprimand from the Supreme Court of the Supreme Court John Roberts, who said: “Accusation is not a suitable answer to disagreement with regard to a judicial decision.”
Lee Gelern, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, who filed a complaint against the deportations together with other rights groups, noted that even during the Second World War, people were given hearings “.
“It was not this summary removal,” said Gerernt.
“You have to be able to fight,” he said. “Otherwise, someone can be taken off the street.”
Lawyers for various deported Venezuelans said that their customers were not members of the Tren de Aragua gang, had not committed any crimes and were only the target because of their tattoos.
In the meantime, Boasberg said during Friday's hearing that “the government is not terribly cooperative at the moment, but I will be to the bottom or they have violated my order.”
'A bad group'
Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Friday before he denied that he signed the proclamation, Trump defended the deportations under the AEA, which was last used during the Second World War to train Japanese residents.
“I was told that they had a very strong control process,” said Trump. “This was a bad group … murderers, murderers and people who were really bad with the worst records you've ever seen.”
In the meantime, the New York Times reported that almost the entire civil rights fan of the Ministry of the Interior Security was fired on Friday.
The office of the Department for Civil Rights and Civil Freedoms was responsible for supervising the efforts of the administration to combat illegal immigration.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by Our staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)
