'Political messaging shop': Fox News conservative blasts Trump’s 'gratuitously provocative' DOJ

On Sunday, March 16, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced that he had received hundreds of alleged gang members who were deported from the United States, including 238 members of Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang and 23 members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13. Bukele, in a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, agreed to incarcerate the deportees in El Salvador for at least a year.

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the deportations invoking the Alien Enemy Act, which was passed by Congress in the late 18th Century. And the deportations are setting off heated discussions in the United States' legal community, with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others saying that the deportees weren't given due process and expressing fears that some of them may not have been members of either Tren de Aragua or the MS-13.

Some of the people expressing reservations about the way the deportations were handled are on the right.

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In an op-ed published by the conservative National Review on March 17, Andrew C. McCarthy — a Fox News contributor — argues, "The president ordered the deportation with no court process purportedly pursuant to the Alien Enemy Act, a late 18th Century statute (now codified at Section 21 of Title 50, U.S. Code), which applies only to wartime conditions and has only been invoked three times in American history — during the congressionally declared wars of 1812, World War I, and World War II…. It is near certain that the (Trump) Administration knowingly defied an order issued Saturday evening, (March 15) by Chief Judge James Boasberg (an Obama appointee to the federal district court in Washington, D.C.) to suspend the initiative to deport the Venezuelans, which included an admonition to turn around any deportation flights that had already departed and return the detainees to the United States."

The Trump Administration's "rhetoric" on the deportations, McCarthy writes, has been "gratuitously provocative."

"Over the weekend," the conservative journalist observes, "Attorney General Pamela Bondi continued her practice of turning the Justice Department into a political messaging shop for the White House, ripping Boasberg for having 'supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans.' I actually think Boasberg was trying to determine whether the detainees have due process rights to challenge their deportation under the Alien Enemy Act, which they very likely do. And President Trump's border 'czar,' Tom Homan, reportedly stated in an interview (on March 17), 'We're not stopping…. I don't care what the judges think, I don't care what the left thinks. We’re coming.'"

The Trump Administration, McCarthy writes, is "intentionally instigating fireworks."

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"That seems like a terrible legal strategy," McCarthy contends, "but it may be winning politics — at least for a little while."

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Andrew C. McCarthy's full National Review article is available at this link.