WASHINGTON >> The Trump administration has asked a federal judge to dissolve the orders he put in place this weekend barring it from deporting people suspected of belonging to a Venezuelan street gang from the country under a rarely invoked wartime statute called the Alien Enemies Act.

The Justice Department also doubled down on its efforts to avoid giving the judge, James E. Boasberg, the detailed information he had requested about the deportations. It complied — but only in part — with his instructions to provide specific data about when two flights, with the people accused of being gang members, took off from the United States for El Salvador.

Taken together, the twin moves — made in separate sets of court papers filed Monday and Tuesday — marked a continuation of the Trump’s administration’s aggressive attempts to push back against Boasberg, the chief judge of U.S. District Court in Washington, who temporarily halted one of President Donald Trump’s signature deportation policies.

The Justice Department has now effectively opened up two fronts in the battle: one challenging the underlying orders that paused, for now, the deportation flights altogether and another seeking to avoid disclosing any information about two flights this past weekend that could indicate they took place after the judge’s orders stopping them were imposed.

In court papers filed Tuesday, lawyers for the Justice Department asserted, as they already have in court, that the two flights left the United States with immigrants removed under the Alien Enemies Act before a written order by Boasberg was formally placed on the docket at 7:25 p.m. Saturday.

But the lawyers refused — again — to tell the judge precisely when the flights took off, leaving unanswered the question of whether they departed after he had issued a similar oral ruling seeking to stop them about 6:45 p.m. that day.

The department lawyers said that providing such details about timing would be “inappropriate” because they claim that the administration had not violated the judge’s order. At the same time, the lawyers said that if Boasberg wanted more information, they would provide it in a private setting.

Boasberg on Tuesday ordered the Justice Department to send him a sealed declaration by Wednesday at noon detailing the times the planes took off, left U.S. airspace and landed.

All of this played out even as Trump attacked Boasberg on social media Tuesday morning as “a troublemaker and agitator” and called for his impeachment. The various legal moves also followed a day of extraordinary tension between the Trump administration and Boasberg inside and outside the courtroom.

Hearings this week

At a hearing in Washington on Monday, a Justice Department lawyer tested the judge’s authority and patience by flatly refusing to provide any details about the timing of the flights that removed dozens of people suspected of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

Citing “national security” concerns, the lawyer, Abhishek Kambli, said the only thing he could give Boasberg was his assurance that the flights had occurred before a written version of his directive stopping them was formally entered onto the docket.

In an even bolder move Monday afternoon, the Justice Department asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to remove Boasberg from the case, citing the “highly unusual and improper procedures” he has used. That effort was preceded by another act of defiance as the administration sought to have the court hearing canceled altogether less than two hours before it was supposed to begin.

Early Tuesday, lawyers for five of the people accused of being gang members fired back, telling the appeals court that Boasberg had bent over backward to accommodate the government’s concerns by offering to consider any sensitive or secret information in a classified facility.

The back and forth between the two sides came as some people in the United States and Venezuela have claimed that their relatives were included in the rapid deportations, despite lacking any criminal record.

The White House has said that more than 130 gang members were removed through the wartime authority of the Alien Enemies Act and that an additional 101 were Venezuelans deported under typical immigration proceedings that grants some due process. Twenty-three others were members of Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, according to the White House.

Even as the Justice Department pushed back on Boasberg’s efforts to learn more about deportation flights, department lawyers also asked him to dissolve the temporary restraining orders that had started the entire squabble.

Justice Department lawyers argued that Boasberg had no authority to issue them in the first place because “the presidential actions they challenge are not subject to judicial review.”

The lawyers also claimed that Trump’s decision to deport the people suspected of membership in Tren de Aragua — which was recently designated as a foreign terrorist organization — was lawful under the Alien Enemies Act.

The administration has repeatedly claimed that those accused of gang membership should be considered subjects of a hostile nation because they are closely aligned with the Venezuelan government and the leadership of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. The White House has also insisted that the arrival to the United States of dozens of Tren de Aragua members constitutes an invasion.

But many of those arguments are likely to face tough scrutiny as the case moves forward.