Rep. Jim Himez (d-conn.) said President Trump “explores the threshold to ignore court orders” in the administration's response to a federal judge who blocked alien enemy calls to speed up deportation.
“This is a very interesting moment because this is what Donald Trump does in life, right? And you see him exploring the threshold for ignoring court orders… I know it's a constitutional crisis,” House Intelligence Committee ranking member Himes said during his appearance Monday afternoon. CNN's “AC360”.
“So they're throwing all the crazy legal theories at the wall. They're feeling bad, they're taking time and everything. And we tell you, we've seen this movie 100 times before,” he continued.
The Trump administration said it deported undocumented Venezuelan immigrants who are presumed to be members of Tren DeLagua's gang over the weekend despite an order to temporarily halt efforts to remove Judge James Boasberg's order and bring back planes deporting individuals to the United States.
White House officials argue that Boasburg's verbal ruling does not hold the same law as the written order.
“If these courts stand up very quickly and say, we're about to start some of the things that courts can do when they lightly empty the individual and when they lightly empty the individual, we can bet that the invasion will be a little bigger next week,” Himes said.
“And soon, this administration will also completely ignore the court's orders.”
Heames also criticized the Trump administration Posting a video Venezuelan deportees are being processed in a prison in El Salvador.
“By the way, this is kind of classic Hollywood, and it will last until the moment when some innocent people are found to be brutal in Salvadra prisons.
He added that if the Trump administration is trying to provide credibility to American citizens, he will provide a list of names of deported people.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to provide names during a briefing with reporters Monday, but provided numbers outlined those who had been removed.
She said a total of 261 people were deported, 137 were deported under the Alien Enemy Act of 1798, 101 were removed under the Title 8 Immigration Act, and 23 were members of the MS-13 gang. The United States paid around $6 billion to El Salvador to detain undocumented immigrants.
“For El Salvador, it was about $6 million for detention of these foreign terrorists,” Leavitt said. “And I'm going to point out the cost of it being a dollar penny compared to the cost of lifetime and the costs we place on American taxpayers to house these terrorists in the largest security prison in the United States.”
