Washington — A divided federal appeals court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s request to set aside a district judge’s decision finding probable cause that some federal officials committed criminal contempt by violating an order to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan migrants bound for El Salvador.
The 2-1 decision from a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is a massive victory for the Trump administration, which has lambasted U.S. District Judge James Boasberg for overstepping his authority when he initiated criminal contempt proceedings in April.
The D.C. Circuit had issued a temporary pause of Boasberg’s decision while it took more time to consider the issue. In an unsigned opinion issued Friday, Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both appointed by President Trump in his first term, granted a request from the Justice Department to toss out Boasberg’s contempt order. Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, dissented.
The Alien Enemies Act case
The dispute over Boasberg’s contempt order stems from immigration officials’ efforts to deport Venezuelan migrants under the wartime Alien Enemies Act, which President Trump invoked in March to swiftly remove alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
In response to a fast-moving legal challenge brought by a group of migrants in Washington, D.C., over the removals, Boasberg temporarily blocked the deportations and issued an oral order directing the Trump administration to return Venezuelan migrants subject to Mr. Trump’s declaration who were on planes bound for El Salvador back to the U.S. A written order issued shortly after prevented the Trump administration from conducting any deportations of noncitizens under the Alien Enemies Act.
But Boasberg said that despite his injunctions, the Trump administration did not stop the removals, and the planes carrying the migrants deported under the Alien Enemies Act landed in El Salvador. The planes were already outside U.S. airspace when Boasberg issued his order blocking U.S. officials from “removing” the detainees, a fact that the appeals court noted in ruling for the administration. Most of the people were transferred to El Salvador’s notorious supermax prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.
The administration’s actions raised questions as to whether it had violated Boasberg’s order, and the judge in April ruled that probable cause existed to find government officials in criminal contempt over what he was their defiance. Boasberg said the government’s actions demonstrated a “willful disregard” for his order.
“The court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory,” Boasberg wrote in his decision. He said the Trump administration could remedy his contempt findings by asserting custody over the migrants who were removed in violation of his order, so they can assert their right to challenge their removability.
The Trump administration appealed Boasberg’s contempt finding and asked the D.C. Circuit to vacate the decision, which it then agreed to do.
In a concurring opinion on Friday, Katsas wrote that the dispute over the removal of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador in March “involves an extraordinary, ongoing confrontation between the Executive and Judicial Branches.” He noted that the proceedings do not involve the lawfulness of removals made under the Alien Enemies Act in March, and said the court may not decide at this time “whether the government’s aggressive implementation of the presidential proclamation warrants praise or criticism as a policy matter.”
Still, Katsas wrote that a decision in favor of the Trump administration is appropriate because “the government is plainly correct about the merits of the criminal contempt, and our saying so now would prevent long disputes between the Executive and the Judiciary over difficult, contentious issues regarding the courts’ power to control foreign policy or prosecutions, or to impose criminal sanctions for violating injunctions entered without jurisdiction.”
“In circumstances much less fraught than these, courts have reviewed interlocutory orders through mandamus to prevent extended inter-branch conflict,” Katsas said.
He wrote that Boasberg’s contempt finding “raises troubling questions about judicial control over core executive functions like the conduct of foreign policy and the prosecution of criminal offenses.”
In her dissent, Pillard argued that Boasberg’s contempt findings were appropriate, and said the majority’s decision to throw out the contempt findings was “in error.”
“Our system of courts cannot long endure if disappointed litigants defy court orders with impunity rather than legally challenge them. That is why willful disobedience of a court order is punishable as criminal contempt,” Pillar wrote. “When it appears that a judicial order has been disobeyed, the court’s ability to learn who was responsible is the first step to accountability.”
Since Boasberg’s findings and the appeals court’s stay of his order, 252 Venezuelans who were deported from the U.S. to CECOT were sent from El Salvador back to their home country as part of a prisoner swap involving the U.S.
Tensions between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary have escalated across Mr. Trump’s second term, as judges have issued decisions blocking implementation of many aspects of the president’s agenda. But the clash between Boasberg and the president has been one of the most fierce, and the judge’s contempt finding marked the most direct rebuke of the administration so far.
Mr. Trump has called for Congress to impeach Boasberg, and the Justice Department filed a judicial misconduct complaint against the judge over comments he allegedly made at a closed-door meeting of the Judicial Conference in March.
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