Trump slams ‘weak’ judges as deportation row intensifies

WASHINGTON: The clash over President Donald Trump’s bid to exercise unprecedented powers in deporting migrants deepened Sunday as he again bashed the judiciary, while a top Democrat warned the country was “closer and closer” to a constitutional crisis.

The latest events followed a dramatic intervention by the Supreme Court in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday to temporarily block Trump’s use of an obscure law to deport Venezuelan migrants without due process.

Trump lashed out Sunday on his Truth Social platform, not specifically naming the high court but slamming the “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten!”

Samuel Alito, one of two conservative high-court justices to vote against the halt, called the emergency ruling by the court’s majority “legally questionable”.

“Literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief... without hearing from the opposing party,” Alito wrote in his dissent.

The court’s order at least temporarily halted what rights groups warned were imminent deportations of Venezuelan migrants being held in Texas, who have been accused of being gang members.

More broadly, the decision temporarily prevents the government from continuing to expel migrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act -- last used to round up Japanese-American citizens during World War II.

The Trump administration has been butting heads with federal judges, rights groups and Democrats who say he has trampled or ignored constitutionally enshrined rights in rushing to deport migrants, sometimes without the right to a hearing.

“We’re getting closer and closer to a constitutional crisis,” Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar told CNN.

“Donald Trump is trying to pull us down into the sewer of a crisis.”

The Republican president has insisted that he is protecting American citizens against a wave of undocumented migration -- including, he says, murderers, terrorists and rapists -- while carrying out the will of the voters who returned him to the White House.

Last month, the Trump administration sent hundreds of migrants, most of them Venezuelan, to the maximum-security CECOT prison in El Salvador, alleging they were members of violent gangs.

In the most publicised case, Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported to the infamous El Salvador mega-prison without charge.

The administration admitted that Abrego Garcia had been included among the deportees due to an “administrative error,” and a court ruled that the government must “facilitate” his return.

Trump has since doubled down, however, insisting that Abrego Garcia is in fact a gang member, including posting an apparently doctored photo on social media Friday of a gang symbol tattooed on his knuckles.

CECOT inmates are packed in windowless cells, sleep on metal beds with no mattresses, and are forbidden visitors.

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen managed on Thursday to secure a meeting with Abrego Garcia and said the man was bewildered by his detention and felt threatened in prison.

On Sunday, Van Hollen challenged the Trump administration to provide evidence that it is respecting US laws in its deportation sweep.

“I’m okay with whatever the rule of law dictates,” he told CNN, “but right now we have a lawless president... a lawless president who is ignoring the order of the Supreme Court of the United States to facilitate (Abrego Garcia’s) return.”

“They need to put up or shut up in the courts of the United States.”