Who Really is to Blame for Anti-Deportation Riots?

One can safely argue the trouble started on March 15 in the federal courtroom of Judge Jeb Boasberg.

President Donald Trump and California Governor Gavin Newsom are pointing fingers as to who shoulders the blame for days of anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles. Newsom, considered a 2028 Democratic frontrunner for president, filed a lawsuit on Monday claiming the administration violated the Constitution in deploying the national guard to quell the rising violence.

The president continues to hammer Newsom for his complicity in the riots, suggesting the two-term governor should be arrested for defying federal law.

Trump, of course, is right. Recent polls indicate he has the public’s support in removing illegals, particularly those with criminal records outside of their unlawful entry into the country, and using force to do so.

But 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. Not only did the media rush to portray the illegal gang bangers as victims (again) of a cruel Trump administration, the false narrative that the White House was defying court orders quickly took root.

Friends in High Places—Copycats in Other Places

It’s important to note that Boasberg is not some unknown judge working in a far flung jurisdiction in the hinterlands of the country—quite the opposite. A friend of Chief Justice John Roberts and law school roommate of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Boasberg is the chief judge of the district court in Washington, the most politically influential bench in the nation.

So his baseless attacks on the Trump administration were not lost on his colleagues. Like good little robed soldiers in a fight against their own countrymen, several judges followed suit; similar restraining orders were issued from California to New York.

Four judges—none of whom appear to possess expertise on foreign policy or national security—brazenly determined the president was wrong to conclude the recent influx of more than 600,000 illegals from Venezuela, an enemy regime, constituted an “invasion” or “predatory incursion.”

Utter madness.

Boasberg’s recklessness arguably has infected other deportation proceedings outside of the scope of the AEA, most notably the removal of “Maryland dad” Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Here illegally and ordered deported in 2019, Garcia was flown to El Salvador, his home country, in March. But his immigration judge had claimed Garcia could not go back home amid alleged fears he would be hurt or killed by gang members—so an army of lawyers representing Garica sued to bring him back to the states.

Judge Paula Xinis, following in the footsteps of her fellow Obama appointee, became Garcia’s greatest defender by, among other things, demanding daily updates as to his whereabouts and ordering his return to the U.S. She, like Boasberg, also accused the Trump administration of ignoring her orders and opened a contempt investigation.

Garcia was brought back last week—only to find his welcome mat consisted of a federal criminal indictment for human, drug, and weapons trafficking.

Boasberg’s fingerprints arguably can be found on other cases. A Colorado judge stopped the deportation of the wife and children of an Egyptian man who attempted to firebomb people attending a pro-Israel event in Boulder; Judge Gordon Gallagher claimed the relatives, also Egyptian nationals, would suffer “irreparable harm”—the same excuse raised by Boasberg—if forced to leave the U.S..

And thanks to Boston Judge Brian Murphy, several Immigration and Custom Enforcement officers and eight criminal illegals right now are languishing on a military base in Africa after Murphy determined the rights of the criminal illegals had been violated by sending them to Sudan rather than their home countries. The ICE officers reportedly are ill with but cannot get proper medical treatment.

Well done, your (dis)honors!

What Did He Expect to Happen?

Imagine for a moment this happening in any other country—millions of people, unvetted and unchallenged, from hostile nations cross the border to plant their flag—figurative and literal—on another country’s soil.

When the citizens of that unprotected country rise up in huge numbers to demand the removal of foreigners taking over cities big and small—judges take not the side of their own citizens but the side of the illegal foreigners including those committing crimes against those same citizens while accusing the elected president, not the illegal foreigners, of breaking the law.

Given this mind boggling scenario, what else is there to expect than more lawlessness, more defiance of authority, and more disrespect of the citizenry? When some of the highest authorities in the land sympathetically and energetically defend nonexistent “rights,” why not torch a few California Highway Patrol SUVs to say thank you?

Boasberg, for his part, is continuing his crusade to protect the “rights” of illegal gang bangers rather than the rights of the president to execute immigration policy and the rights of the American people to secure the borders. His latest gambit was once again halted by a higher court; the D.C. appellate court just paused Boasberg’s newest order demanding the Trump administration provide illegals currently incarcerated in El Salvador a chance to fight their detention.

“[Boasberg’s] increasingly fantastical injunctions continue to threaten serious harm to the Government’s national-security and foreign-affairs interests,” the Trump DOJ wrote in a motion this week.

But it appears Boasberg’s actions are doing much more than that. And when the smoke clears in Los Angeles and other cities preparing for more unrest this weekend, Americans should look to the E. Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse in the nation’s capital for who to blame.