Washington — A federal judge said Wednesday that probable cause exists to find the Trump administration in criminal contempt over its defiance of an order to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan migrants that was bound for El Salvador.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote in a 46-page decision that the government’s actions on March 15 “demonstrate a willful disregard” for his order barring the government from transferring certain migrants into Salvadoran custody under the wartime Alien Enemies Act.
Those actions, he wrote, are “sufficient for the court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the government in criminal contempt. 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.”
“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it,” Boasberg wrote.
The judge’s ruling marks the most direct rebuke of the Trump administration amid its escalating tensions with the federal judiciary, which have particularly grown over challenges to the president’s efforts surrounding immigration.
President Trump and his allies have repeatedly attacked Boasberg over his handling of the case that arose after the president issued a proclamation in March invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a seldom-used law passed in 1789, to summarily deport Venezuelans who his administration claims are members of the gang Tren de Aragua.
Boasberg was overseeing a challenge brought by a group of Venezuelan migrants who sought to prevent their removal under the more than 200-year-old wartime law. The judge swiftly blocked the Trump administration from removing the plaintiffs from the U.S. for 14 days and, after convening an emergency hearing, told government lawyers in-person that they should return people subject to the proclamation who were on planes headed to El Salvador back to the U.S.
A written order issued shortly after blocked the Trump administration from conducting any deportations of noncitizens in its custody under the Alien Enemies Act. Boasberg’s order did not block the government from deporting the alleged gang members or others under other immigration authorities.
But the judge said that despite his written and oral directives, the government did not stop the removal process, and planes carrying migrants subject to deportation under the Alien Enemies Act later landed in El Salvador, where most were transferred to its Center for Terrorism Confinement, or CECOT.
The Trump administration’s actions sparked questions as to whether it had violated Boasberg’s order. The judge wrote in his opinion that “boasts” by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele “intimated that they had defied the court’s order deliberately and gleefully.”
Who, exactly, in the Trump administration ordered the two planes to continue on to El Salvador, is unclear. In his opinion, Boasberg wrote that he plans to find that out through further proceedings and potentially live witness testimony under oath if needed.
In the last hearing on the matter, a Justice Department attorney named two Department of Homeland Security officials and one State Department official as his points of contact after the judge’s decision but said he did not know who directed the planes to continue their flights.
