Skye Perryman on CBS Saturday Morning: “The government actually just wants us, and the American People, to believe what it says without any process or any evidence at all.”
Skye Perryman on MSNBC: “This is just how this administration wants to operate. It wants to hide and deflect from the American people what is going on here.”
Washington, DC — Democracy Forward is continuing the fight against the Trump administration’s dangerous executive overreach, challenging unconstitutional actions in court, and safeguarding American democracy.
Last week, Democracy Forward, alongside co-counsel American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of District of Columbia, continued legal proceedings in their lawsuit against the Trump administration. The case, J.G.G. v. Trump, challenges the president’s unprecedented use of the Alien Enemies Act—a law historically invoked only during declared wars—to deport individuals without due process. During Friday’s hearing, U.S. District Judge Boasberg criticized the administration, stating that “the Government again evaded its obligations,” and today, denied the government’s motion to vacate the temporary restraining order currently in place.
This weekend, Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman issued a statement responding to President Trump’s recent executive memorandum that targets attorneys representing clients against the federal government. This action follows the President’s public threat to “go after… a lot of law firms” and his attacks on the American Bar Association, the nation’s largest voluntary legal professional organization.
See coverage below:
MSNBC: Judge Rebukes DOJ Over Alien Enemies Act Deportations
On the President’s Dangerous Abuse of War Powers:
“This case is one that really should concern every single American because you have the President of the United States seeking to invoke a wartime authority when we have no declared war, and seeking to remove people summarily from this country without any process whatsoever, and then using very politicized rhetoric to do so, to try to make people feel less safe here in the United States, when really the thing that’s making us less safe is this use of wartime power to summarily remove people with no process.”
On the Administration’s Attempt to Operate in Secret:
“This is just how this administration wants to operate. It wants to hide and deflect from the American people what is going on here. If the president and the administration are confident that people who were removed from the country needed to be removed from the country, they could go through the lawful process that we have in this country to remove people. You don’t summarily invoke a wartime authority to send people out without process, do it as a federal judge is ordering you to turn planes around, and then just try to claim that you had the authority to do it all along. So I think that what you see is the government’s strategy here is really to deflect and to try to avoid accountability for its actions.”
CBS Saturday Morning: Trump administration clashes with federal judge overseeing deportation case
On the Government’s Attempt to Bypass Due Process:
“The government actually just wants us, and the American people, to believe what it says without any process or any evidence at all.”
On the Trump Administration’s Wrongful Deportation and Imprisonment:
“We are deeply concerned about that, and this is something that should concern every single American in this country.”
The New Republic: Judge Slams Trump Lawyers’ Shady Behavior in Deportation Case
A federal judge questioned the Department of Justice Friday over Donald Trump’s “expanded” use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport planefuls of immigrants without due process over the weekend.
During a hearing, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said that Trump’s invocation of the centuries-old wartime law to declare the Tren de Aragua gang an invading force was “unprecedented,” and that the policy ramifications were “troublesome and problematic and concerning,” according to Politico’s senior legal correspondent Kyle Cheney, who documented the hearing in a thread of posts on X.
Lawyers from the ACLU and Democracy Forward had challenged Trump’s use of the wartime law Saturday, asserting that several individuals the government claimed were gang members had been wrongly identified. Boasberg then ordered the Trump administration to temporarily pause deportations under the AEA, but the government continued with the removal of more than 250 individuals.
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