The Trump administration’s deportation of more than 100 Venezuelans under an obscure 18th century wartime power last month directly violated federal court orders, and the government’s subsequent invocation of the state secrets privilege to withhold information from the judge — who was inquiring as to whether his orders were followed — is based on assertions that are not even “remotely true” and should be rejected, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asserted in new court filings.

The ACLU on Monday urged U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to deny Donald Trump’s administration’s invocation of the privilege, contending that it has never been invoked to stymie a court’s inquiry into whether its own orders had been followed. Should the privilege be permitted to stand, the ACLU alleges, it would effectively give the administration free rein to conceal evidence from courts at will.

“Plaintiffs are unaware of any case in which the state secrets privilege has been invoked to withhold evidence from a court seeking to enforce its own orders,” the 20-page filing states. “[T]he application of the state secrets privilege in this case is entirely unwarranted. If the government’s reasoning here were accepted more broadly, it could thwart judicial investigation of contempt whenever the government asserts a nexus to ‘foreign affairs’ or ‘national security’ — allowing the executive to defy court orders with impunity.”

The privilege permits the government to withhold certain evidence based on a “reasonable danger” that disclosure would expose military matters in a manner adverse to national security interests — in this case, the administration’s deportation of more than 100 Venezuelan migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA).

“Defendants’ declarations utterly fail to meet their burden to show that disclosure of the ordered information to this Court will endanger national security,” the plaintiffs’ filing states. “Not only are the government’s declarations too vague and speculative to support the application of the state secrets privilege, but their core premises are belied by extensive, official government disclosures concerning the information now claimed to be ‘secrets of state.’ As this Court explained in its March 19 Order, Secretary Rubio ‘has revealed many operational details of the flights, including the number of people involved in the flights, many of their identities, the facility to which they were brought, their manner of treatment, and the time window during which these events occurred.””

The Trump administration, so far, has invoked the AEA to justify mass deportations of members of one particular Venezuelan gang. In the executive order underlying the litigation, Trump called for the removal of “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members” of Tren de Aragua (TdA), which has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization since January.

On March 15, the ACLU sued for and won a temporary restraining order. Action has since been quick, steady, and tense. An oral bench ruling to stop removals under the auspices of the AEA — which included a directive to turn planes around containing Venezuelan immigrants — was infamously ignored, with the government claiming that the flights had already left U.S. airspace and were therefore outside of the court’s jurisdiction.