President Trump on Friday deflected when asked if he signed the order to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law, to deport Venezuelan migrants allegedly linked to the Tren de Aragua gang.
“We want to get criminals out of our country number one. I don’t know when it was signed, because I didn’t sign it,” Trump told reporters before departing the White House on Friday. “Other people handled it.”
“[Secretary of State] Marco Rubio has done a great job, and he wanted them out and we go along with that,” he added. “We want to get criminals out of our country.”
The president could have also been referencing border czar Tom Homan and Attorney General Pam Bondi, who have also defended the government’s actions after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled the administration could not invoke the 1798 law.
Trump was also asked Friday about Boasberg’s assertion during a recent hearing that the proclamation to use the Alien Enemies Act was signed “in the dark” — or late at night on Friday or Saturday morning.
“It seems to me the only reason to do that is you know it’s a problem and you want to get them out of the country before a suit is filed,” Boasberg, who initially blocked the administration’s use of the law, told the government during a 75-minute hearing on Friday.
The 4-page proclamation to invoke the 1789 law appears to have been signed by the president, according to a copy filed in the Federal Register.
Boasberg, an appointee of former President Obama, has gone back and forth with the Trump administration over whether deportation flights from Texas to El Salvador ignored an order he issued for them to be turned around. In light of the criticism, the president called for the federal judge to be impeached.
“The government’s not being terribly cooperative at this point, but I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order, who ordered this and what the consequences will be,” Boasberg said during Friday’s hearing.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has refused to provide more information to the judge about the migrant flights, pointing to concerns over national security and faulting him for stonewalling the executive branch’s authority.
They have also argued that since the flights were beyond U.S. airspace at the time Boasberg requested they be turned around, the government had no right to intervene.
Hours after Trump’s remarks to reporters, the White House released a statement to CNN, saying that the president “was obviously referring to the original Alien Enemies Act that was signed back in 1798.”
“The recent Executive Order was personally signed by President Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act that designated Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in order to apprehend and deport these heinous criminals,” they wrote.
The White House statement, however, seems to contradict what Trump told journalists earlier.
“I would say that I’d have the Secretary of State handle it, because I’m not really involved in that, but the concept of getting bad people murderers, rapists, drug dealers, all of the, these are really some bad people out of our country,” Trump told reporters when asked if he would dispatch more flights to El Salvador.
“I ran on that. I won on that,” he said.
Boasberg also hammered Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign during the hearing Friday, questioning the government’s moves that he said violated his original order.
“We had a conversation on Saturday in which I treated all parties with respect and politeness and made that clear without raising my voice, without having any edge, I made it very clear what you had to do,” Boasberg said on Friday. “Did you not understand my statement in that hearing?”
Ensign responded that the government did not violate the judge’s order and that he was not aware of the deportation flights during the first hearing.
“Your Honor, I understood your statements and your directive to relay your directives to my clients, which I have done,” Ensign said.
