“Other leaders & countries are trying to emulate the #Bukele arrangement,” said Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, a director of Lawyers for #CivilRights, a Boston-based group that has represented #immigrants in lawsuits against the #Trump admin. Countries are increasingly “raising their hand to volunteer their incarceration facilities & to facilitate the #deportation of people,” he added.

After a different federal judge sharply limited #deportations to “third countries” — places where the immigrants have no prior ties — the #DOJ pressed #DHS ofcls to clarify their view of the judge’s decision to ensure that their legal arguments were consistent.

“My take on these emails is that DOJ leadership & DOJ litigators don’t agree on the strategy. Please keep DHS out of it,” shot back James Percival, a snr DHS adviser.

Judge #Boasberg …has rejected that interpretation of his orders & found probable cause to initiate #contempt proceedings over potential defiance of his rulings. That process has been halted for now by an appeals court.

The messages also revealed tension between #DOJ attorneys & their counterparts at #DHS as they sought to mount a defense of the #Trump admin’s #deportation policies in court.

The messages show that in the hours after #Boasberg’s ruling, #ErezReuveni repeatedly relayed to colleagues that the #immigrants covered by the judge’s order should not be turned over to #ElSalvador. And he later expressed concern that they seemed to have been handed over anyway.

In one of the newly-disclosed emails, the acting head of #DOJ’s Civil Division, Yaakov Roth, told Reuveni & other ofcls that the men were unloaded based on #legal advice given by #EmilBove.

…Many of the messages pertain to an extraordinary showdown on March 15, when #ImmigrantRights lawyers persuaded a federal judge in Washington, James #Boasberg, to order the admin to halt an in-progress #deportation [#rendition] of 130 #Venezuelans to #ElSalvador. Boasberg ordered that planes containing the men, whom #Trump deemed “alien enemies” under a wartime #law, be turned around, if necessary, & in any event that the men not be handed over to the Salvadoran govt.

The newly-released messages reinforce claims by #whistleblower #ErezReuveni that #EmilBove played a key role in a decision by #Trump admin #immigration ofcls to turn scores of #Venezuelan immigrants over to #ElSalvador despite a US judge’s #CourtOrder not to do so.

The messages show increasing alarm among #DOJ lawyers that the admin had in fact defied court orders & that some ofcls…could face #sanctions for misleading courts.

#SCOTUS’ recent moves have been cheered by the #Trump admin, which has been negotiating w/countries around the world to get them to accept deportees to help speed its efforts to remove thousands of immigrants. “Fire up the deportation planes,” a spox for the #DHS disturbingly said after the court’s ruling on third-country #deportations last month.

More recent orders lifted protections for hundreds of thousands of people who had been granted temporary protected status [#TPS] or #humanitarian parole, allowing them to be deported. And the rulings concerning so-called third-country #deportations to places other than immigrants’ home nations appeared to give little weight to #DueProcess.