Elon Musk has voiced his support to impeach a federal judge who blocked President Donald Trump‘s deportation of Venezuelan gang members.
The president had sought to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 on Saturday in an effort to accelerate the deportation of alleged members of the notorious Tren de Aragua.
He declared that the US was facing an ‘invasion’ from a criminal organization that has been linked to kidnapping, extortion, organized crime and contract killings.
But just hours later, Judge James Boasberg issued a ruling blocking the suspected gang members’ deportations for 14 days and ordered planes carrying the Venezuelans back to their home country return to the United States.
One plane was able to land, however, following an agreement between Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to hold the suspected gang members at the country’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center.
Amid the uproar over the ruling, Republican Congressman Brandon Gill vowed to file Articles of Impeachment against Boasberg – an Obama appointee.
‘Necessary,’ Musk wrote as he shared the post on X.
The Trump administration is already appealing Boasberg’s order to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
Under Trump’s directive, all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are determined to be members of the gang, are within the United States and are not naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the country are ‘liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.’
He claimed that gang members were ‘conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States’ with the goal of destabilizing the nation.
‘Over the years, Venezuelan national and local authorities have ceded ever-greater control over their territories to transnational criminal organizations, including TdA,’ the president explained.
‘The result is a hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States, and which poses a substantial danger to the United States.’
Trump then went on to argue that invoking the 18th century law is justified because he contends the Tren de Aragua gang has ties to the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Saturday’s directive also said that Tren de Aragua ‘has engaged in and continues to engage in mass illegal migration to the United States to further its objectives of harming United States citizens.’
DailyMail.com was the first news organization in the US to report on TdA arriving in America over a year ago, however, the gang became a household name after video of them storming an apartment near Denver surfaced in August.
The Trump administration has since designated Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa Cartel and six other criminal groups as global terrorist organizations.
But Democrats and civil rights groups were quick to criticize Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to fuel mass deportations.
It has only ever been used three times before, all during wars.
Most recently, the act was invoked during World War II, when it was used to incarcerate Germans and Italians as well as for the mass internment of around 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-American civilians.
It was also used during World War I and the War of 1812.
‘This proclamation is as lawless as anything the Trump administration has done,’ Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued in favor of an injunction at a hearing on Saturday said in an interview.
‘We are on very dangerous ground when the administration is going to try to use wartime authority, when we’re at peace, for immigration purposes or any other non-military purpose.’
Boasberg ultimately agreed.
He ruled that the Alien Enemies Act ‘does not provide a basis for the president’s proclamation given that the terms invasion, predatory incursion really relate to hostile acts perpetrated by any nation and commensurate to war.’
Boasberg also claimed he needed to issue his order immediately because the federal government was already flying migrants it claimed were newly deportable under Trump’s proclamation to be incarcerated in El Salvador and Honduras.
‘I do not believe I can wait any longer and am required to act,’ he said during the Saturday evening hearing in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU and Democracy Forward.
‘A brief delay in their removal does not cause the government any harm,’ Boasberg added, noting how the five remain in government custody but ordering that any planes in the air be turned around back to the US.
Under an agreement between Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, though, the alleged gang members are being held at the country’s Terrorism Confinement Center where they will spend 23 and a half hours each day locked in their overcrowded cells, with just 30 minutes to stretch – chained in the middle of the hallway.
The Trump administration hit out at the ruling, with Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign contending that the president has broad latitude to identify threats to the country and act under the 1798 law.
He noted the U.S. Supreme Court allowed President Harry Truman to continue to hold a German citizen in 1948, three years after World War II ended, under the measure.
‘This would cut very deeply into the prerogatives of the president,’ Ensign said of an injunction.
Attorney General Pam Bondi also said Boasberg ‘had supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans’ in his ruling.
‘This order disregards well-established authority regarding President Trump’s power, and it puts the public and law enforcement at risk,’ she said in a statement.
Still, this is not the first time Musk has called for a judge to be impeached, arguing last month that US District Judge Paul Engelmeyer should similarly be ousted after the judge blocked the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury systems.
‘A corrupt judge protecting corruption,’ Musk posted on X following the ruling. ‘He needs to be impeached NOW.’
Musk’s call for Boasberg’s removal from the bench also came just days after another federal judge ruled that thousands of ‘probationary’ employees who were fired as part of DOGE’s efforts must be reinstated.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup, a Bill Clinton nominee, called the large scale firings across government a ‘sham’ in a fiery decision, days after ruling that a government directive for the firings was ‘unlawful.’
The ruling by the San Francisco based judge takes immediate effect, and applies to the Pentagon, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department.
