Court orders DC judge to end criminal contempt inquiry into Trump officials involved in deportation flights

By Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered US District Judge James Boasberg to end his efforts to hold Trump administration officials accountable for flouting his orders in a high-stakes immigration case.

The decision comes nearly a year after Boasberg, the chief judge of the federal trial-level court in Washington, DC, said in a blockbuster ruling that “probable cause exists to find the government in criminal contempt” for defying his orders to temporarily halt the deportation of migrants under a powerful wartime authority invoked by President Donald Trump.

The Trump administration appealed several times to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals so the contempt proceedings never fully got underway, halting the judge’s work while it considered whether he had the power to move ahead with the inquiry.

But now, a pair of Trump appointees on the appellate court has decided to fully stamp out Boasberg’s plans, saying in a sharply worded opinion that his contempt probe represented “a clear abuse” of power given that the administration had previously identified then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as the official responsible for deciding to allow the deportations in question to continue.

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

“The district court has launched an intrusive criminal contempt investigation into whether the government acted willfully when it transferred suspected Tren de Aragua members to Salvadoran custody. But the end of this investigation is a legal dead end,” the court said.

Judge Michelle Childs, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, dissented.

“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,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said on X.

The decision is the latest broadside against Boasberg in the matter. A different panel of judges on the appeals court had previously put his inquiry on hold, but last November, the full DC Circuit gave him the greenlight to restart the proceedings.

Weeks later, he ordered Drew Ensign, a top Justice Department official, to testify under oath about administration decisions in mid-March 2025 that resulted in the deportation of migrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act — despite the judge’s order for flights carrying the migrants to turn around pending a legal challenge to Trump’s use of the act.

Boasberg, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, also said he wanted to hear from Erez Reuveni, an ex-Justice Department lawyer who alleged in a whistleblower complaint last year that a then-top DOJ official told his colleagues in March the administration intended to ignore court orders amid Trump’s aggressive deportation effort.

But the judge’s plans for that testimony, the appeals court said on Tuesday, “improperly threaten an open-ended, freewheeling inquiry into Executive Branch decision-making on matters of national security that implicate ongoing military and diplomatic initiatives.”

The two appeals court judges described Boasberg’s efforts as a “judicial intrusion into the autonomy of a co-equal department.”

Rao and Walker also revisited an earlier issue in the case involving the Alien Enemies Act deportations. In a hastily called hearing the day the deportations were being carried out, Boasberg demanded officials turn around the planes carrying the migrants but did not say officials cannot transfer the migrants to Salvadoran custody, where they were later held for months in a notorious mega-prison.

Instead, those instructions came in a written order he issued after the hearing concluded. That reality, the judges said, cut in favor of the government’s bid to shut down the contempt proceedings.

“In our constitutional system of government, criminal liability cannot turn on the unstated intentions (or post hoc assertions) of a district court judge,” they wrote.

Lawyers representing the migrants removed under the Alien Enemies Act will ask the full DC Circuit to review this latest decision from the three-judge panel, said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt, who is the lead counsel in the case.

“The opinion is a blow to the rule of law. Our system is built on the Executive Branch, including the president, respecting court orders. In this case there is no longer any question that the Trump administration willfully violated the court’s order,” Gelernt said.

Dissenting from Tuesday’s ruling, Childs said that the Trump administration had not met the high bar for when appeals courts can intervene in this kind of dispute, and warned that the majority was setting a precedent that would tie the hands of trial courts to hold contempt proceedings in the future.

“Contempt of court is a public offense, and the fate of our democratic republic will depend on whether we treat it as such,” she wrote in a dissenting opinion that stretched nearly 80 pages.

‘Justice requires me to move promptly’

When Boasberg sought to hear from live witnesses last year, he said he needed the testimony because a declaration submitted by Secretary Noem at the time did “not provide enough information for the Court to determine whether her decision was a willful violation of the Court’s Order.” Noem was fired last month.

Ensign was involved in the court proceedings around the deportation flights on March 15, 2025, and the department previously acknowledged that he “promptly conveyed” Boasberg’s orders to DHS and Justice Department leadership.

Boasberg has said, meanwhile, that Reuveni’s whistleblower complaint was part of “significant developments” that occurred while his contempt proceedings were on hold for much of last year.

“I certainly intend to find out what happened on that day,” Boasberg said in November as he announced plans to restart the contempt proceedings. “This has been sitting for a long time and I believe that justice requires me to move promptly on this.”

The flights carrying the migrants deported under the sweeping 18th century wartime authority continued to El Salvador even after Boasberg’s orders, and the migrants were imprisoned there until last summer, when they were released as part of a prisoner swap with Venezuela.

More recently, Boasberg has ordered Trump administration officials to work to provide some of those migrants with an opportunity to contest their removal under the Alien Enemies Act. The DC Circuit is currently reviewing that decision.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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CNN’s Tierney Sneed contributed to this report.