The Trump administration on Monday stonewalled a federal judge seeking answers about whether the government had violated his order by deporting more than 200 people over the weekend, including those officials identified as members of a Venezuelan criminal gang.
The hearing in Federal District Court in Washington escalated a conflict between the White House and the courts that threatened to become a constitutional crisis.
A Justice Department lawyer refused to answer any detailed questions about the deportation flights to El Salvador, arguing that President Trump had broad authority to remove immigrants from the United States with little to no due process under an obscure wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
The tense back-and-forth in court between the judge, James E. Boasberg, and the Justice Department lawyer, Abhishek Kambli, left open the possibility of further conflict down the road. Judge Boasberg directed Mr. Kambli to certify in writing by noon on Tuesday — under seal if needed — that no immigrants were removed after his written order went into effect, a piece of information that will be crucial as the judge seeks to determine whether the Trump administration flouted his authority.
The legal battle over the removal of the immigrants was the latest — and perhaps most serious — flashpoint yet between federal courts, which have sought to curb many of Mr. Trump’s recent executive actions, and an administration that has repeatedly come close to openly refusing to comply with judicial orders.
Earlier Monday, Mr. Trump’s so-called border czar, Tom Homan, made defiant remarks on television, indicating that the administration planned to continue such deportations despite the court’s order — an action that could pit one of the coequal branches of the government against another.
“We’re not stopping,” Mr. Homan said on Monday, during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.” “I don’t care what the judges think — I don’t care what the left thinks. We’re coming.”
Mr. Homan said that the flights to El Salvador included members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang and that the public should expect more deportation flights “every day.”
As the hearing in Washington began, Judge Boasberg said he did not intend to rule on the merits on whether the Trump administration was correct in its decision to deport the immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act. Ultimately, the judge will have to decide whether the administration was right in removing people under the statute, which allows the government wide discretion to summarily deport noncitizens during wartime and if there is an invasion of U.S. territory.
For now, Judge Boasberg was concerned with a narrower issue: He wanted to figure out the timeline of the flights to El Salvador to determine whether they were in violation of his ruling.
But Mr. Kambli repeatedly refused to say anything about the flights, citing “national security.” He simply reiterated the government’s position that it had done nothing to violate Judge Boasberg’s order.
Even before the hearing began, Justice Department officials tried to have it canceled, writing to Judge Boasberg in the late afternoon to tell him there was no point in coming to court since they did not intend to provide him with any additional information about the deportation flights.
In an even more astonishing move, the department sent a letter to the federal appeals court sitting over Judge Boasberg, asking it to remove him from the proceedings entirely by citing what it described as his “highly unusual and improper procedures” in handling the case.
Several times during the hearing on Monday, it became clear that two very different perspectives on the case were coming into conflict in the courtroom.
Judge Boasberg was searching for the facts of what happened on the ground. The Justice Department, on the other hand, tried to avoid saying much of anything at all.
When Judge Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order against the removals over the weekend, he said that any planes carrying several people suspected of being Venezuelan gang members had to return to the United States “however that’s accomplished — whether turning around the plane or not.”
The White House has denied that it violated the order, arguing that the deportation flights departed U.S. soil before Judge Boasberg submitted his written order.
In a court filing early Monday, lawyers for some of the deported Venezuelans noted that the White House had claimed that Judge Boasberg’s order was published in written form at 7:26 p.m. on Saturday, ignoring that he had issued an oral version of the same decision around 6:45 p.m., which “unambiguously directed the government to turn around any planes carrying individuals being removed.”
The written and verbal versions of the order contain a significant difference, however — the written version did not include the instruction to turn back any planes. Trump officials say they recognize the written order as the definitive decision in the case.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, maintained on Monday that there were “questions about whether a verbal order carries the same weight as a legal order, as a written order, and our lawyers are determined to ask and answer those questions in court.”
Later in court, Judge Boasberg pushed back on the administration’s argument.
“That’s a heckuva stretch,” he said of the government’s attempt to differentiate his written ruling from his oral ruling.
Trump administration officials have also suggested that Judge Boasberg’s order did not apply to planes that were already over international waters when the written decision was handed down — a position that the lawyers for the deported immigrants sharply disagreed with.
Judge Boasberg said on Monday that the issue with that argument was that he still had authority over the officials who make the decisions about the planes, even if the planes themselves were outside of U.S. territorial jurisdiction.
Speaking on Fox News on Monday evening, after the hearing, Attorney General Pam Bondi criticized the judge.
“What he’s done is an intrusion on the president’s authority,” Bondi said. The judge, she said, “thinks he can control foreign policy for the entire country and he cannot. Right now, we are evaluating our options.”
The deportations — as well as the resistance shown to the judicial branch — prompted criticism that the administration was advancing its agenda without concern for the courts.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee accused the Trump administration of “another unlawful and brazen power grab” in proceeding with the deportations.
“We cannot allow Trump to flout the rules and due process,” the Senate Democrats said in a statement on Monday. “All of us, including the courts, must continue to hold this administration accountable, and prevent the Trump administration from taking us down a dark and dangerous road.”
Ms. Leavitt told reporters on Monday that the more than 260 deported immigrants included 137 people removed through the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, the obscure law that the administration has claimed it is using to deport Venezuelans older than 14 who are alleged to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang. An additional 101 were Venezuelans who were deported under normal immigration proceedings but who the White House also said had gang ties. Ms. Leavitt said 23 more were members of the Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.
The United States is paying El Salvador $6 million to take in the deportees, Ms. Leavitt said. She described the group of deportees as being responsible for a variety of violent crimes, including murder and sexual abuse, but the administration had not released extensive details about each deportee, and had not provided evidence of their gang affiliations. Ms. Leavitt did not commit to releasing the name of each person deported through the Alien Enemies Act.
The deportations to El Salvador were just one example of the administration being in conflict with the judicial branch.
Mr. Trump himself expressed skepticism about a ruling last week by a federal judge in California ordering the administration to rehire thousands of fired probationary workers. Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday night that the judge was “putting himself in the position of the president of the United States, who was elected by close to 80 million votes.”
Over the weekend, a federal judge in Boston said there was reason to believe that the Trump administration had willfully disobeyed his order to provide the court notice before expelling a doctor who was detained for 36 hours in Boston when she returned from visiting her relatives in Lebanon even though she had a valid visa.
Despite the judge’s issuing an order temporarily blocking her removal, federal authorities still flew Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, a professor at Brown University, to Paris, presumably en route to Lebanon. The Department of Homeland Security said it deported Dr. Alawieh because she attended a Hezbollah leader’s funeral in February while in Lebanon.
The Trump administration is facing accusations in at least three other cases that it has not fully complied with judges’ orders or is in contempt for having violated them.