A divided federal appeals court has ordered a Washington judge to abandon his effort to hold Trump
A federal appeals court has dealt a significant blow to efforts to hold Trump administration officials legally accountable for defying a judicial order during one of the most contested immigration enforcement operations of the president’s second term, ruling Tuesday that a Washington district court judge had overstepped his authority in pursuing a criminal contempt investigation.
The decision by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit orders U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of the federal trial court in Washington, to shut down his contempt inquiry entirely. The probe had been aimed at determining whether administration officials willfully ignored Boasberg’s directive to temporarily halt deportation flights carrying migrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime authority invoked by President Donald Trump.
How the contempt inquiry began
The case traces back to March 2025, when deportation flights continued to El Salvador even after Boasberg issued orders calling for the planes to turn around pending a legal challenge to the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act. The migrants on those flights, whom the government identified as suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, were subsequently held for months in a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador before being released last summer as part of a prisoner swap with Venezuela.
Boasberg determined there was probable cause to find the government in criminal contempt for defying his orders and sought testimony from senior officials including a top Justice Department lawyer who had been present during the court proceedings surrounding the flights. A whistleblower complaint filed by a former DOJ attorney, alleging that a senior official had told colleagues the administration intended to ignore court orders amid its aggressive deportation push, added further weight to the judge’s determination that the inquiry needed to move forward.
What the appeals court decided and why
2 Trump-appointed judges on the appeals court, Neomi Rao and Justin Walker, ruled that Boasberg’s contempt probe represented a clear abuse of discretion. Their opinion pointed to the fact that the administration had previously identified then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has since been removed from her post, as the official responsible for the decision to allow the deportations to proceed. The judges argued that pursuing a wide-ranging inquiry into high-level executive branch deliberations on matters touching national security and diplomacy went well beyond what the courts are permitted to do.
The panel also addressed a procedural detail that it said favored the government’s position. During a hastily convened hearing on the day the flights were taking place, Boasberg verbally instructed officials to turn the planes around but did not explicitly state in that session that transferring migrants to Salvadoran custody was prohibited. That prohibition came only in a written order issued after the hearing ended. The judges found that criminal liability could not rest on instructions a judge had not clearly stated aloud in open court.
A third judge on the panel, Michelle Childs, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, issued a dissent stretching nearly 80 pages, arguing that the majority had set a troubling precedent that would limit the ability of trial courts to pursue contempt proceedings in the future and warning that treating defiance of court orders as acceptable threatened the foundations of the legal system itself.
What comes next
Attorneys representing the migrants deported under the Alien Enemies Act retain the option of asking the full DC Circuit to review Tuesday’s decision. The ACLU, which has served as lead counsel throughout the case, called the ruling a blow to the rule of law and expressed concern about what it signals for judicial oversight of executive branch conduct going forward. A separate Boasberg order requiring the administration to give some of those migrants an opportunity to challenge their removal remains under review by the DC Circuit.
Source: CNN