A top official at the Justice Department told subordinates they would need to consider ignoring court orders the day before the administration carried out deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, according to a department whistleblower.
In a letter sent to Congress by his attorneys, Erez Reuveni said he and others were told by Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove in very blunt terms that they might have to defy court orders.
Bove told attendees of the March 14 meeting that President Donald Trump would soon be invoking the Alien Enemies Act and that deportations would be carried out that weekend.
“Bove indicated these removals were a priority for the administration and stressed to all in attendance that the planes needed to take off no matter what,” according to the letter from Reuveni’s attorneys at the Government Accountability Project. A copy of the letter, which was first reported on by the New York Times, was obtained by NBC News.
“Bove then made a remark concerning the possibility that a court order would enjoin those removals before they could be effectuated. Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts ‘f— you’ and ignore any such court order,” according to the letter which was obtained by NBC News. The New York Times was first to report on the letter.
Reuveni said he was “stunned” by the remarks, but left the meeting reassured after another attendee said the DOJ would tell the administration to comply with court orders.
Now that disbelief “is a relic of a different time,” the letter says, and Reuveni was involved in three separate cases where the DOJ ignored court orders and made misrepresentations in court before he was fired in April.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche blasted the Times article in a post on X, and said the story “describes falsehoods purportedly made by a disgruntled former employee and then leaked to the press in violation of ethical obligations. The claims about Department of Justice leadership and the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General are utterly false.”
The letter was sent one day before Bove — who along with Blanche represented Trump in his criminal and civil cases before he won the presidential election in November — has a confirmation hearing for a lifetime appointment to a federal appeals court.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Senior adviser Stephen Miller blasted Reuveni as a “saboteur” and a “Democrat” during an April 14 interview on Fox News, allegations the letter pushes back on. Reuveni noted in his letter that he been promoted on the day of the Bove meeting, and had won awards for his legal work during Trump’s first term in office.
His whistleblower complaint outlines what it calls “violations of law, rules or regulations, and the abuse of authority by DOJ and White House personnel.”
“These high-level governmental personnel knowingly and willfully defied court orders, directed their subordinate attorneys to make misrepresentations to courts, and engaged in a scheme to withhold relevant information from the court to advance the Administration’s priority of deporting noncitizens,” the complaint says.
The first instance was the day after the Bove meeting, when U.S. District Judge James Boasberg called an emergency hearing after a lawsuit was filed claiming that alleged gang members were set to be deported under the AEA without any due process.
At the Saturday hearing, Boasberg asked DOJ attorney Drew Ensign if he was aware of any deportation flights that weekend, and Ensign said he was not. In his letter, Reuveni said Ensign was in the meeting where Bove said those flights were indeed happening.
After Boasberg issued an order halting deportations under the AEA and directing the flights to return, Reuveni said he sent emails to Homeland Security and the State Department informing them of the order and got no response.
Represenatives for DHS and the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He said he later learned that Bove “had advised DHS that under the court order it was permissible to deplane individuals on the flights that departed U.S. airspace” before the judge’s order was officially entered on the docket.
After the judge demanded answers about what had happened, Reuveni was informed that the “government was not going to answer the court’s questions about anything that happened before 7:26 p.m. on March 15.”
The judge last month found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in contempt over the deportation flights.
Reuveni said the department also ignored court orders in another deportation case, where a judge had issued an injunction barring deportees from being sent to countries they did not come from. He said he informed DHS to prepare guidance to tell staffers those deportations were to be halted nationwide, and was told by a DHS attorney they’d heard otherwise.
When Reuveni asked a DHS lawyer what the issue was, he said he was told, “Ask your leadership.” He said he was later told by a colleague to stop asking questions and putting things in writing.
Reuveni was fired in early April, after he acknowledged in court that one deportee, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been sent to a prison in El Salvador despite a court order barring him from being sent there.
“[D]espite the high-profile nature of the case, Mr. Reuveni initially believed the case could be resolved through a straightforward return of Mr. Abrego Garcia to the United States,” the letter says.
Attorneys for “both DHS and DOS informed Mr. Reuveni that they would only consider any action to attempt to remedy the illegal removal of Mr. Abrego Garcia if DOJ leadership approved it. DOJ leadership never did,” it says.
Reuveni said he was then pressed to say in court filings that Abrego was a “terrorist” and he refused to do so, because he wasn’t aware of any evidence to substantiate that claim. He said he told his boss, “I didn’t sign up to lie.”
He was placed on administrative leave seven hours later for “failure to follow a directive” and then fired on April 11.
Abrego was returned to the U.S. earlier this month after he was hit with trafficking charges.
