Judge ready to slap Trump administration with contempt charges

The heat just got turned up on the Trump administration in regard to its fight with Judge Boasberg on deporting illegal gang members.

Judge Boasberg is now threatening to hold the administration in contempt in the latest salvo.

Appeals Court Upholds Boasberg Order

Trump was clearly taunting Judge Boasberg early in this case, waiting until the last possible second to respond to documentation requests, and even then delaying until the administration decided if it wanted to use the Alien Enemies Act to justify the deportations.

Eventually, Trump did cite the legislation to justify the deportations, but Judge Boasberg rejected the notion since our country had not declared war on another nation, which is the spirit of that law.

Trump appealed Boasberg’s ruling, but he lost that case as well in a 2-1 ruling, with only a Trump-appointed judge siding with the administration.

Trump has since petitioned the Supreme Court to review the case, but there has been no word as of yet on the progress before the Court.

Why Is He Losing?

It seems like this should be a no-brainer win for Trump, but the issue is actually quite complicated, even though I think most of us would agree that these people need to be deported.

At the center of the issue for Trump is in how the Alien Enemies Act is worded. This is a wartime piece of legislation that has only been used three times in our entire history, and we were at war on all three of those occasions.

Now, Trump has consistently called the border issue an “invasion,” which is how he is trying to justify the use of the AEA, but at every turn, the judges overseeing the case have cited that we are not really at war, so the use of this legislation is not permissible.

I fear that Trump will see the same ruling when he goes before the Court, as I just don’t see anyone other than Justices Thomas and Alito interpreting the border problems as an act of war or a legitimate "invasion," regardless of how we feel about it.

Possible Contempt

Boasberg has clearly had enough of the Trump administration, and now he sounds like he is ready to drop the hammer, calling the activities of the administration, “Pretty sketchy.”

Boasberg called out Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign, saying, "If you really believed everything you did that day was legal and would survive a court challenge, you would not have operated the way that you did.”

The judge eventually asked for the names of everyone who Ensign met with after the initial hearing, taking down their names, possibly to charge them with contempt for ignoring his March 15 order.

All this aside, how do we not have legislation in place that would allow a sitting president to deport such dangerous people? Rather than signing executive orders that can be reversed by the next president, we need Congress to start working on commonsense legislation to protect this country from dangerous illegals. Can they please start doing their jobs and stop this endless bickering and showmanship?