The White House on Thursday failed to meet a deadline to respond to a federal judge’s questions about deportation flights President Donald Trump ordered last weekend using a rare wartime authority.
The court had temporarily blocked flights to El Salvador carrying Venezuelan migrants suspected of being part of a gang and ordered them to be returned to the U.S. But the flights proceeded anyway.
Trump and his allies have since called for D.C District Chief Judge James Boasberg, the judge in the case, to be impeached, drawing increased attention to both the broad authority being used by the administration and its defiance of the judicial branch.
“We’re in a serious constitutional crisis,” Rose Cuison-Villazor Rutgers, a professor of law at Rutgers University, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News.
“In my mind, what is going on right now is that the United States government, and in particular President Trump’s administration, is expanding the use of executive powers in ways that have led to the lack of checks and balances, to the point where the judiciary orders have been issued by federal judges, seems to be being ignored by the Trump administration,” Cuison-Villazor said.
“The executive branch obviously has the power to implement and enforce the laws. But those laws must comply with the U.S. Constitution. And under the Supreme Court’s precedent, Marbury v. Madison … it is the federal judges, it is these courts that have the power to determine whether there is a violation of the Constitution, even if the actor in this case is the federal government,” she said.
