JULIE KELLY: Who Really is to Blame for Anti-Deportation Riots?
As riots now spread to major cities from Seattle and Chicago to New York City, one can safely argue the individual most responsible for initiating the chaos is D.C. Judge James Boasberg. Few people have worked harder to keep illegals here while seeding a dangerous—and false—account of what the president is trying to do.
Boasberg lit the match on March 15 during a series of hasty proceedings to advance the first lawsuit against the president’s Alien Enemies Act (AEA). Within hours of the president signing the act, the American Civil Liberties Union sought a restraining order to stop the removal of illegal Venezuelans associated with the multi-national crime racket known as Tren de Aragua, the basis of the AEA.
Working quickly that Saturday, Boasberg immediately banned the deportation of anyone covered by the AEA. But that wasn’t enough. During a Saturday evening hearing, Boasberg made an outrageous demand of the DOJ, which had been given no time to file a response or even gather their collective thoughts on the matter.
Boasberg: “[Any] plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States, but those people need to be returned to the United States. However that’s accomplished, whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you. But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”
At the time, two planes carrying AEA subjects were about to land in Central America—far out of U.S. airspace and clearly outside of Boasberg’s jurisdiction. Further complicating the issue, likely by design, Boasberg failed to include his unhinged verbal demand to return planes in a subsequent written order. (The planes were not sent back to the U.S., opening the door to Boasberg’s contempt trap, as I explained here.)
Even though the Supreme Court reversed Boasberg’s reckless decisions—and later put a lid on his contempt investigation—the die had been cast.
Needless to say, read the whole thing.