The fight in Federal Judge James Boasberg’s D.C. courtroom over whether President Donald Trump can use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to summarily fly Venezuelan immigrants to a Salvadoran mega-prison without trial or charge is a fight over the strength of our constitutional system. The phrase constitutional crisis has been getting a lot of air time since Trump took office. But it is no exaggeration in this case.

It would be a mistake to think about this case as just about immigration. The arguments that government attorneys have been advancing before Boasberg are not only geared towards preserving their ability to continue these removals — of as-of-yet unknown individuals based on unseen evidence under a misused wartime authority — but indeed take direct aim at judicial powers.

You can boil a lot of what Trump is pushing here to a simple argument: We’re at war with Venezuelan street gangs so the president can use wartime powers that ride roughshod over the courts and our constitutional protections. But this isn’t a war. We’ve fought wars with England and Germany, with Japan and North Vietnam. America knows what war looks like.

What’s next? At war with liberals, with Democrats, with the press?

Even conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has had enough, scolding Trump who called for impeaching Boasberg.

DOJ lawyers have spent days arguing in filings and open court that the judiciary has no power to review this wanton display of raw executive power. The government has tried to get Boasberg thrown off the case entirely for asking basic questions about the flights at issue.

In teeth-gnashing filings, the government have insisted that the president is acting under “inherent Article II powers… not subject to judicial review or intervention,” which is another way of saying that the executive branch believes it is simply unconstrained by the courts — including on questions of use of force and privation of liberty on U.S. soil.

In open court, before an incredulous Boasberg, DOJ attorney Abhishek Kambli refused to answer questions about who was on the flights, when they left, or even how many flights took off, claiming that this information — regarding flights that were awaited by literal camera crews — was sensitive national security information.

This fight seems very much like a trial balloon, seizing on areas of law like immigration and military powers where the executive has particularly acute authority, and playing on the emotional narrative that this is about targeting bloodthirsty criminals, even if that narrative is false.

ICE Acting Field Office Director Robert Cerna told the court that “many” of the people removed to the Salvadoran mega-prison had no criminal records, but that “The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat. In fact… the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose.” Several have been tentatively identified as regular people and asylum seekers.

If Trump is allowed to ignore the law and steamroll the courts here, there is absolutely no reason to believe that this will be the extent of it. Even if they were all proven gang members, a fundamental principle of this country is that everyone gets due process of law.

It’s no exaggeration to view the outcome of these proceedings and this case as a marker of the strength of our system of rule of law as a whole.

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