DHS Secretary Kristi Noem openly admitted to defying a judge’s order and dared the court to do something about it in a stunning court filing.
The case, which has dragged on through 2025, concerns a March incident in which D.C. Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg ordered that two planes bound for El Salvador carrying mostly Venezuelan migrants remain in the United States.
The order was ignored, and the detainees were handed over to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, a facility notorious for human rights abuses. The men were ultimately transferred to Venezuela in a prison swap months later.
Pursuing answers as to why his order was not followed, Boasberg ordered that those involved provide written testimony detailing their role in the decision. Noem, 54, boasted in the court filing Friday evening that she was the one who chose to ignore his ruling.
A filing accompanying her declaration taunts Boasberg, saying, “Accordingly, if the Court continues to believe its order was sufficiently clear in imposing an obligation to halt the transfer of custody for detainees who had already been removed from the United States, the Court should proceed promptly with a referral.”
The Justice Department admitted that Noem made the decision last week. DOJ attorney Tiberius Davis wrote, “After receiving that legal advice, Secretary Noem directed that the AEA [Alien Enemies Act] detainees who had been removed from the United States before the Court’s order could be transferred to the custody of El Salvador.”
The DOJ has argued that Judge Boasberg’s order to halt the deportation of more than 100 men was ambiguous, and that its decision to ship the men out was legally consistent.
Boasberg’s oral order came on March 15, when the planes were already in the air. He said, “Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States.”
DOJ whistleblower Erez Reuveni, a former DOJ attorney, alleged over the summer that the DOJ always planned to ignore Judge Boasberg’s orders. He accused Emil Bove, then-principal associate deputy attorney general, of telling DOJ attorneys “to be prepared to tell courts ‘f— you’ if they ruled against the government,” per a letter from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse to Chief Justice John Roberts. Reuveni also accused Bove of telling the lawyers, “the planes need to take off no matter what.”
Like many judges who have challenged the Trump administration, Boasberg has endured smears from the president himself, despite a sterling record and bipartisan approval. When Boasberg ruled that the migrants be kept in the United States, Trump called Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator” and demanded his impeachment, prompting a rare rebuke from Justice Roberts.
Boasberg was appointed to the D.C. Superior Court by George W. Bush in 2002 and then to the U.S. District Court by Barack Obama in 2011. The Senate confirmed him in a 96-0 vote.
The Supreme Court ultimately voided Boasberg’s order to halt the migrants’ deportation, saying he lacked authority in the case. Boasberg has continued to pursue the question of whether the DOJ acted in contempt of court, as Noem and the DOJ defied his order before the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“Such disobedience is punishable as contempt, notwithstanding any later-revealed deficiencies,” he wrote.
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