WASHINGTON : The Trump White House has deployed a lawyer of Indian-origin to defend the US President invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for surreptitiously deporting illegal immigrants while defying a federal judge’s orders to stop the flights.
Abhishek Kambli, who serves as a Deputy Associate Attorney General at the US Department of Justice, came under fire from Judge James Boasberg on Monday after the administration employed verbal calisthenics to argue that it was in compliance with his ruling not to deport immigrants Trump characterizes as criminals and terrorists, while gloating privately that it is flouting his orders because the President’s executive powers is unconstrained by the lower judiciary.
Amid calls from MAGA hardliners for his impeachment and prosecution, Judge Boasberg told Kambli to certify in writing by noon Tuesday — under seal, if necessary — that no immigrants had been deported, after Trump officials defied his orders to turn around flights that had already taken off on Saturday.
In fact, in an unprecedented slight of the court by a foreign leader, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who is receiving and incarcerating deported immigrants from the U.S as a business proposition, tagged a story on the judge’s effort to stop the flights with the message “Oopsie…too late!” with a laughter emoji.
But anger more than mirth is coursing through the Trump administration at Judge Boasberg’s effort to stop the deportation flights under the 1798 AEA. On Tuesday, MAGA activists alleged that he is blocking the fights “without disclosing the fact that his daughter works for an organization called Partners For Justice that gives criminal illegal aliens and gang members legal advice.”
Kambli and other administration officials made the argument, which the judge Boasberg suggested was ingenuous, that the flights had already taken off and were over international waters when he issued his orders and could not be turned back. At one point, the judge asked him, “You’re saying the president has extra powers over a plane once it leaves the United States?… I think my equitable powers are pretty clear that they don’t end at the water’s edge or air space edge.”
Kambli also irked the judge by saying he was authorized to provide only limited information because of “national security concerns.” Asked how many migrant flights had already left the US under the Alien Enemies Act, Kambli replied, “Those are operational issues and I am not at liberty to provide information.”
Kambli has come to the limelight in Washington DC with a stellar legal record in representing Trump MAGA causes at the state level, from blocking the Biden administration’s $475 billion in student loan forgiveness to securing an injunction against the 2024 rule expanding “sex” to include gender identity. As assistant attorney general of Kansas, he also won an injunction against a rule granting federal collective bargaining rights temporary agricultural workers under H-2A visas.
Drafted into the Justice Department in Trump 2.0, this is the most high-profile case he has handled, one marked by bitter partisan divide which is also testing the limits of judicial oversight over a rampant executive. From calling him a “terrorist sympathizer” to an “enemy combatant” MAGA hardliners are unloading on Judge Boasberg, even as pro-Trump lawmaker Brandon Gill said he would move articles of impeachment — to approval from Elon Musk.