A federal appeals court on Tuesday put a halt to an extraordinary contempt investigation by a federal judge over whether the Trump administration had violated his order to stop flights of Venezuelan immigrants from being sent to El Salvador last year.
The decision was the most forceful move yet by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to shut down a nearly yearlong effort by James E. Boasberg, the chief federal district judge in Washington, that had become a major flashpoint in President Trump’s battles with the judiciary over his attempts to push the limits of his power.
Judge Boasberg has sought to get to the bottom of a question from the early weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term in the White House: whether some of his aides had deported the immigrants to El Salvador, using an 18th-century wartime law, in violation of an order not to expel them from the country without first giving them an opportunity to challenge their removal.
The immediate effect of the appeals panel’s 2-to-1 ruling killing off what it described as Judge Boasberg’s “improper investigation” was that the administration would now most likely avoid a potentially explosive hearing where witnesses were poised to testify about internal deliberations in the deportation case.
That hearing was originally scheduled to take place late last year and was supposed to have focused on testimony from Erez Reuveni, a Justice Department whistle-blower, and Drew Ensign, a senior department lawyer. But the same appeals court temporarily paused the proceedings shortly before they were set to be held. The panel’s new decision shut them down altogether after finding that Judge Boasberg had engaged in an “abuse of discretion” by seeking sworn testimony from members of the executive branch.
“These proceedings improperly threaten an open-ended, freewheeling inquiry into executive branch decision-making on matters of national security that implicate ongoing military and diplomatic initiatives,” Judge Neomi Rao wrote for the panel’s majority. “This judicial intrusion into the autonomy of a coequal department cannot be remedied by a later appeal from a contempt conviction.”
Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, praised the panel’s ruling, sticking up for the Justice Department lawyers who had worked on the case and would no longer face scrutiny. That included Mr. Blanche’s former deputy, Emil Bove III, who left the department last year to become a federal appeals judge.
“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,” Mr. Blanche wrote on social media.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been representing the Venezuelan men from the start of the case, in turn denounced the decision.
“It is unfortunate that the court has kneecapped Judge Boasberg’s effort to determine who willfully violated his order, which resulted in dozens of men being sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison to be abused and tortured,” said Lee Gelernt, the A.C.L.U’s lead lawyer.
The panel’s sharp rebuke of the judge’s investigation came at a moment of extreme tension between the Trump administration and the federal bench. Judge Boasberg has been a particular focus of the administration’s ire as the president and his aides have repeatedly assailed him for his decisions in the deportation case and other legal matters. Those attacks have included vitriolic broadsides on social media, calls for his impeachment and even a failed attempt to bring an ethics complaint against him.
The deportation flights were one of Mr. Trump’s first and most aggressive efforts to make good on his promise to deport as many as a million immigrants from the United States. Just two months after returning to the White House, he issued a proclamation invoking the sweeping powers of the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law passed more than two centuries ago, to round up and deport scores of Venezuelan men accused of being members of the violent street gang Tren de Aragua.
The question of whether he used the act properly to expel the Venezuelans is now being considered by a different court, in New Orleans, and is likely to ultimately make its way to the Supreme Court. Judge Boasberg’s contempt proceeding was supposed to have focused solely on the issue of whether administration officials had complied with his instructions during an emergency Zoom hearing on March 15, 2025, to ground any deportation flights bound for El Salvador that day and turn around any planes already in the air.
Judge Rao, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, wrote that Judge Boasberg’s inquiry was not only an example of judicial overreach, but was also unneeded because, in her opinion, the administration had never violated his initial order. The order, she pointed out, barred officials from removing the Venezuelans from the country, but said nothing about what should happen to those who were already outside U.S. airspace by the time a subsequent written order was issued.
Judge Justin R. Walker, another Trump appointee, agreed with her, noting in a concurring opinion that even though Judge Boasberg had issued an oral ruling demanding that planes still in the air should turn around, the written order did not explicitly bar the administration from transferring immigrants outside the United States into Salvadoran custody.
Judge J. Michelle Childs, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., issued a dissenting opinion, criticizing her colleagues for ending an inquiry that could have embarrassed the administration.
“Contempt of court is a public offense, and the fate of our democratic republic will depend on whether we treat it as such,” Judge Childs wrote. “In the many forms in which it can be committed, contempt degrades the power that the people, through their Constitution and Congress, gave the federal courts. Without the contempt power, the rule of law is an illusion, a theory that stands upon shifting sands.”
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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