DC appeals court orders Judge Boasberg to halt Trump contempt probe over deportation flights

A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to end his contempt inquiry into senior Trump administration officials after they deported more than 130 Venezuelan migrants — capping a protracted and bitterly disputed legal fight.

Judges for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that Boasberg’s inquiry overstepped the court’s authority and represented an “unwarranted impairment” of the executive branch. Judges Neomi Rao and Justin Walker, two Trump appointees, authored the majority, which ordered Boasberg, the chief district judge for the District of Columbia, to terminate the contempt inquiry roughly 12 months after it began. 

At issue was the Trump administration’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador last March — migrants that the administration alleged were in the U.S. illegally and in some cases had ties to the violent gang Tren de Aragua — and whether senior Trump officials had willfully defied an emergency court order issued by the district court judge in allowing the deportation flights to continue.  

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Rao and Walker said Tuesday that the March 15 emergency order that Boasberg issued last year, which sought to halt the administration from immediately deporting the Venezuelan migrants, was too ambiguous to justify what they ruled was an “intrusive” investigation into high-level executive matters.

“The district court proposes to probe high-level Executive Branch deliberations about matters of national security and diplomacy,” Rao and Walker said Tuesday. “These proceedings are a clear abuse of discretion.”

J. Michelle Childs, a Biden appointee, authored a sharp, 80-page dissent.

“Contempt of court is a public offense, and the fate of our democratic republic will depend on whether we treat it as such,” she said, adding: “Without the contempt power, the rule of law is an illusion, a theory that stands upon shifting sands.”

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The ruling is a significant victory for the Justice Department, which had asked the appeals court several times to halt the contempt inquiry into the Alien Enemies Act removals. Short of that, they asked the higher court to intervene and block the scheduled testimony of key government witnesses.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche praised the 2-1 ruling Tuesday afternoon on social media, signaling the outsize importance that the administration has placed on the inquiry, and on efforts to end the contempt probe.

“Today’s decision by the DC Circuit should finally end Judge Boasberg’s year-long campaign against the hardworking Department attorneys doing their jobs fighting illegal immigration,” he said on X.

Lawyers for the Trump administration argued last year that the contempt inquiry is an “idiosyncratic and misguided inquiry,” which they said falls outside the jurisdiction of the district court. The 2-1 majority ruling from the appeals court appears to support that contention. 

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Boasberg, for his part, has staunchly defended his efforts. “This inquiry is not some academic exercise,” he said in a ruling of his own last year. 

“The opinion is a blow to the rule of law,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt, the lead counsel for plaintiffs, said Tuesday in response to the circuit court’s ruling. 

“Our system is built on the executive branch, including the president, respecting court orders,” he said. “In this case there is no longer any question that the Trump administration willfully violated the court’s order.”

The ACLU did not immediately indicate whether it planned to appeal the ruling to the full bench or the to the Supreme Court.

The newly blocked contempt inquiry had been expected to bring to the fore long-simmering tension between the Trump administration and the chief judge for the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., whose oversight of the Alien Enemies Act case has put him squarely in Trump’s crosshairs. 

Trump’s remarks about Boasberg, including calls for his impeachment, prompted Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts to issue a rare, public warning last year. 

It is unclear if lawyers representing the class of Alien Enemies Act plaintiffs will challenge the D.C. Circuit’s ruling, though they do have options to do so. Lawyers can either seek review “en banc,” or from the full bench of appeals court judges, or kick the case back to the Supreme Court for review.