A divided federal appeals court ruled on Friday that US District Court Judge James Boasberg cannot move ahead with criminal contempt proceedings against Trump administration officials involved in a high-stakes immigration case.
The 2-1 ruling from the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals wipes away a ruling from Boasberg, an appointee of former President Barack Obama issued in April that said “probable cause exists” to hold administration officials in criminal contempt for violating his orders in mid-March halting the use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.
The appeals court had temporarily put Boasberg’s plans on ice while it weighed the government’s appeal of the ruling, and Friday’s ruling represents a significant setback for the judge, who had vowed to hold officials involved in the matter accountable.
In a separate decision on Friday, the DC Circuit wiped away a different ruling from Boasberg that required the administration to give the migrants flown to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act an opportunity to challenge their removal from the US under the sweeping wartime law.
The two judges siding with the Justice Department in the contempt case were appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term. The dissenting judge was an Obama appointee.
Attorneys for the immigrants at the center of the case could appeal Friday’s contempt decision to the full bench of the DC Circuit, as well as the Supreme Court.
“All options are on the table,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt, who represents the migrants, told CNN following the court’s issuance of the opinion.
The decision from the judges is another vote from Trump-appointed jurists in support of executive power and against Boasberg’s ability in this case to sanction or even question the behavior of the Trump Justice Department.
“The district court’s order raises troubling questions about judicial control over core executive functions like the conduct of foreign policy and the prosecution of criminal offenses,” Judge Greg Katsas wrote in a concurring opinion.
Katsas, in his opinion, said he believed Boasberg’s original orders to stop the removal of detainees on planes, which Boasberg found the Trump administration violated, were too ambiguous.
He also noted that by stepping in now to end the contempt proceedings Boasberg started, the appeals court would be putting an early stop to a standoff between the judiciary and the executive branch.
“This proceeding does not concern the lawfulness of the AEA removals made on March 15 and 16. Nor may we decide whether the government’s aggressive implementation of the presidential proclamation warrants praise or criticism as a policy matter. Perhaps it should warrant more careful judicial scrutiny in the future. Perhaps it already has,” Katsas wrote. “Regardless, the government’s initial implementation of the proclamation clearly and indisputably was not criminal.”
Another Trump-appointed appellate judge, Neomi Rao, also wrote that a criminal contempt proceeding shouldn’t happen.
In a concurring opinion that was less sweeping about avoiding interbranch conflict than Katsas’, Rao said contempt used by a judge as punishment couldn’t be a “backdoor to obtain compliance” with a court order.
Writing in dissent, Judge Nina Pillard, the Obama appointee, defended Boasberg in how he responded to the detainees’ situation during his emergency hearing in mid-March.
“Chief Judge Boasberg faced immense pressure to make a quick decision in a rapidly evolving, high-stakes situation. He performed that task calmly and with an even hand, bringing to bear his skill and wisdom as an experienced jurist,” Pillard wrote.
She continued: “Even when faced with what reasonably appeared to him to be foot dragging, evasion, and outright disregard for his jurisdiction and his orders, he responded with unfailing composure. The majority does an exemplary judge a grave disservice by overstepping its bounds to upend his effort to vindicate the judicial authority that is our shared trust.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi declared the court’s ruling a “MAJOR victory” for Trump and his Justice Department, saying in a statement on X that Boasberg’s ruling represented “failed judicial overreach at its worst.”
Another blow to Boasberg
The second broadside to Boasberg from the appeals court stemmed from an order he issued in June that required the officials to give hundreds of migrants a chance to challenge their designation as “alien enemies” who could be swiftly removed from the US.
That unanimous ruling from the DC Circuit said that because the group of migrants sent to the prison, known as CECOT, in mid-March have since been released, the changed circumstances “have overtaken the rationale” for Boasberg’s order.
Last month, the group of about 250 Venezuelans who had been imprisoned in CECOT were flown back to their home country in exchange for 10 US nationals. Their attorneys in the case before Boasberg told the judge on Thursday that despite being freed from the prison, “many” of them want to pursue legal avenues to potentially return to the US.
The appeals court acknowledged those potential pathways in its ruling Friday, saying if some of them “do wish to proceed, they may be required to adjust their habeas and other claims to account for these changed circumstances.”
Boasberg’s ruling from June concluded that US officials had “improperly” loaded the migrants on to flights in mid-March and sent them to El Salvador without giving them a chance to challenge their designation as “alien enemies” subject to President Donald Trump’s use of the sweeping 18th century wartime law.
Earlier this year the Supreme Court, without deciding whether Trump had properly invoked the Alien Enemies Act, said officials must give migrants targeted under it a chance to contest their removal through so-called habeas petitions.
“Absent this relief, the Government could snatch anyone off the street, turn him over to a foreign country, and then effectively foreclose any corrective course of action,” Boasberg, the chief judge of the trial-level court in Washington, DC, wrote at the time.
The Justice Department quickly appealed his ruling, and the appeals court put his requirement on hold while it reviewed the case.
The DC Circuit’s unsigned opinion on this case included Katsas and Rao, as well as Judge Justin Walker, who is also a Trump appointee.
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