Erez Reuveni: Even before I went to law school, I understood what I wanted to do as a lawyer was to be involved in public service. And everyone understood at the time. You do it at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. There’s no better place as a young attorney to just do the sorts of cases where you’re standing up in court as a first-chair attorney on behalf of the United States, doing things that law firm partners don’t do.
Scott Pelley: And that meant what to you?
Erez Reuveni: That meant I was there on behalf of the American people, on behalf of the millions of citizens of this country to make sure that justice was done.
Erez Reuveni started in 2010 as a so-called “career” attorney. Most lawyers at the Justice Department stay for years, even decades, defending the policies of one president after another. Reuveni specialized in immigration law. And in the first Trump term he defended the controversial ban on travelers from Muslim countries, among many other cases.
Erez Reuveni: I was promoted. I received three awards for defense of fairly high-profile litigation. I defended everything they put on my plate. That was my job.
60 Minutes
Scott Pelley: And at the beginning of the second Trump administration, you were promoted again.
Erez Reuveni: That’s right. Very soon into the administration, I was selected to be the acting deputy director of the immigration section, overseeing about a hundred attorneys and every case that arose in the federal District Courts.
But it was the very day of that promotion, Friday, March 14th, that he, and others, were called to a fateful meeting with Emil Bove, President Trump’s newly appointed number three at the Justice Department, who was once Trump’s criminal defense attorney.
Erez Reuveni: And we were told at this meeting that over the weekend, the president of the United States would be signing a proclamation invoking something called the Alien Enemies Act. This is a wartime law from 1798 invoked three times in the nation’s history, during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II.
The Alien Enemies Act allows rapid expulsion from the U.S. of the citizens of enemy nations during a war. But without a declared war, Trump used it against more than 100 Venezuelans that the government said were terrorists. They were to be denied their right to be heard by a judge. Reuveni says above expected a challenge.
Erez Reuveni: Bove emphasized, those planes need to take off, no matter what. And then after a pause, he also told all in attendance, and if some court should issue an order preventing that, we may have to consider telling that court, ‘f*** you.’
Scott Pelley: And when you heard that, you thought what?
Erez Reuveni: I felt like a bomb had gone off. Here is the number three official using expletives to tell career attorneys that we may just have to consider disregarding federal court orders.
The next day, Saturday, lawyers for the prisoners sued. Judge James Boasberg called a hearing and asked government lawyer, Drew Ensign, whether the planes were leaving that weekend.
Erez Reuveni: And Ensign says to Boasberg, I don’t know. Now Ensign was at the same meeting that I was at the day before, where we were told in no uncertain terms that planes were taking off over the weekend, that those planes needed to take off no matter what. And he says, I don’t know.
Reuveni says that moment in court was “stunning.”
Erez Reuveni: It is the highest, most egregious violation of a lawyer’s code of ethics to mislead a court with intent.
We don’t know Ensign’s intent. It was during the hearing that the planes took off. The judge issued an order and immediately, Reuveni emailed the agencies involved. “…the judge specifically ordered us to not remove anyone… and to return anyone in the air.” But that didn’t happen. Instead, more than five hours after Boasberg’s order, the detainees, and other prisoners arrived at a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
Erez Reuveni: And then it really hit me. It’s like, we really did tell the court, screw you. We really did just tell the courts, we don’t care about your order. You can’t tell us what to do. That was just a real gut punch.
Peter Keisler: The Department of Justice has the responsibility to obey all court orders. It can disagree with the order. It can appeal it. It can ask the judge to reconsider. But while the order is in effect, it’s the obligation of the department to see to it that the government complies.
60 Minutes 
Peter Keisler should know. He ran the Justice Department as acting attorney general in 2007 for George W. Bush. He worked in Ronald Reagan’s White House. And today, he’s part of a law firm representing federal workers fired by the administration.
Scott Pelley: But some people watching this interview are thinking, if these people have been labeled by the administration as terrorists, as gang members, then we should get them out of the country as quickly as possible.
Peter Keisler: And there are lawful means to get people who are terrorists out of the country.
‘Lawful means’ that, Kiesler says, must include giving the detainees a chance, in court, to contest the charges.
Peter Keisler: Look, we have a saying in this country. It’s deeply embedded in who we are. Everybody deserves their day in court. And all of us want to know that if the government acts against us, we will at least have the opportunity to go to a neutral decision-maker, present evidence and legal argument, and make sure that the government stays within its legal bounds.
Scott Pelley: But does the day in court apply to immigrants?
Peter Keisler: Absolutely. Nobody can be spirited out of the country without some opportunity to contest the factual and legal basis for that.
And it turned out, when the full facts were known, this Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported by mistake. Normally people deported in error are returned. But instead, Reuveni says that in a phone call from a superior he was ordered to argue against Abrego Garcia’s return by telling a judge that Abrego Garcia was an MS-13 gang member and a terrorist.
Erez Reuveni: And I respond up the– so up the chain of command, no way. That is not correct. That is not factually correct. It is not legally correct. That is– that is a lie. And I– cannot sign my name to that brief.
Scott Pelley: You’re not saying Abrego Garcia is a choir boy. You’re just saying that no one had managed to prove that he was a terrorist.
Erez Reuveni: Here’s the really important thing here. Whether Mr. Abrego Garcia is or isn’t a member of MS-13 or a terrorist or anything else is beside the point. What matters here is that they did everything they did to him in violation of his due process rights. What’s to stop them if they decide they don’t like you anymore, to say you’re a criminal, you’re a member of MS-13, you’re a terrorist, what’s to stop them from sending in some DOJ attorney at the direction of DOJ leadership to delay, to filibuster, and if necessary, to lie? And now that’s you gone and your liberties changed.
After refusing to sign the brief that called Abrego Garcia a terrorist, Reuveni was fired. In June, he teamed up with lawyers from the Government Accountability Project to file a whistleblower disclosure. Making his story public helped expose a growing concern in many courts across the country that too often now the Justice Department is abusing the limits of the law.
Ryan Goodman: So the judges are saying some incredible things.
60 Minutes 
Ryan Goodman is a law professor at New York University who heads a non-partisan law journal. His team has analyzed hundreds of suits filed against the administration. And he didn’t imagine what judges were saying to the Trump Justice Department.
Ryan Goodman: We found over 35 cases in which the judges have specifically said, what the government is providing me is false information. It might be intentionally false information, including false sworn declarations time and again.
In court records compiled by Goodman, Democratic and Republican appointed judges are critical of the Trump Justice Department’s work. “…Highly misleading…” said one judge. “…A serious violation of the court’s order…” wrote another. And a third warned, “trust that had been earned over generations has been lost in weeks.”
Scott Pelley: This isn’t the way things normally proceed?
Ryan Goodman: It’s not. In fact, I would say for some of the cases that we’re looking at, maybe that would happen once every ten years.
Scott Pelley: Who gets hurt by this?
Ryan Goodman: The one entity, or person, or institution that gets hurt the most is the Justice Department.
We requested interviews with the head of the department, Attorney General Pam Bondi, her former deputy, Emil Bove and Drew Ensign, the attorney who said he didn’t know when the planes were taking off, according to the court transcript. All declined the interview request. Bove was nominated for a judgeship and, in June, he was asked about Reuveni’s claims.
Emil Bove: I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order.
Bove said, in part, that Reuveni was in no position to tell his superiors what to do.
Emil Bove: There’s a suggestion that a line attorney, not even the head of the Office of Immigration Litigation, was in a position or considered himself to be to bind the department’s leadership and other cabinet officials.
Bove was also asked if he had dismissed the courts with an expletive.
Sen. Adam Schiff: Well, did you suggest telling the courts ‘f*** you’ in any manner?
Emil Bove: I don’t recall.
Bove was confirmed for the judgeship. And in a statement to 60 Minutes he wrote, in part, “…Mr. Reuveni’s claims are a mix of falsehoods and wild distortions of reality…”
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. He’s now charged with transporting illegal immigrants. And he’s pled not guilty. A judge criticized the Justice Department’s “…poor attempts…” to connect him to MS-13. And he was not charged with terrorism.
About those prisoners sent to El Salvador, they were released to their home country, Venezuela. And in April, the Supreme Court agreed, unanimously, that they had been entitled to their day in court.
Scott Pelley: This interview is the first time that your face has been seen in such a public way, and I wonder if that concerns you.
Erez Reuveni: It does. At the same time, I think about what we’re losing in this moment. I think about why I went to the Department of Justice, to do justice. And I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. And my view of that oath is that I need to speak up and draw attention to what has happened to the department, what is happening to the rule of law. I would not be faithfully abiding by my oath if I stayed silent right now.
Produced by Aaron Weisz and Ian Flickinger. Broadcast associates, Michelle Karim and Georgia Rosenberg. Edited by April Wilson.