Appeals court blocks contempt probe into Trump deportation flights

On March 15, 2025, Chief U.S. District Judge JBJames Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan men to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The Trump administration proceeded anyway: two flights carrying 137 Venezuelan nationals landed at El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison while Boasberg's order was still in effect. During the hearing, Boasberg orally told officials to turn the planes around, but his written order didn't explicitly prohibit transferring the men into Salvadoran custody.

Boasberg opened a criminal contempt inquiry to determine whether administration officials had willfully defied his order. The 🏛️D.C. Circuit stayed that inquiry while considering the administration's challenge. The 137 Venezuelan men were released from CECOT and returned to Venezuela through a U.S.-brokered prisoner swap in summer 2025, but the contempt question stayed alive because it involved courts' authority to enforce orders against the executive branch.

On April 14, 2026, a three-judge 🏛️D.C. Circuit panel ruled 2-1 that Boasberg must end his contempt inquiry. Circuit Judge NRNeomi Rao authored the majority and Circuit Judge JWJustin Walker joined it. Both judges were appointed by President Trump: Rao in 2019 and Walker in 2020. Rao and Walker wrote that criminal contempt requires violation of an order that is clear and specific, and that Boasberg's March 2025 oral directive didn't meet that standard because it told officials to turn the planes around but didn't explicitly prohibit transferring the men into Salvadoran custody.

The majority also ruled that Boasberg's contempt inquiry itself—demanding sworn testimony from executive officials—was unwarranted judicial intrusion into executive branch decision-making regarding national security. They wrote that courts must recognize the paramount necessity of protecting the executive branch from vexatious litigation.

Circuit Judge JMJ. Michelle Childs, a Biden appointee confirmed to the 🏛️D.C. Circuit in 2022, dissented sharply. Childs wrote that the majority's ruling would echo in future proceedings against all litigants. This meant the new clear and specific threshold would apply not just to the executive branch but to anyone facing contempt proceedings.

Childs argued that Boasberg wasn't trying to penalize the executive branch. He was trying to establish facts before deciding whether a criminal referral was warranted. Fact-finding is a standard part of any contempt inquiry and doesn't amount to judicial overreach, she wrote. She said the majority's reasoning stymied Boasberg in a way that affects not only these contempt proceedings but will echo in future proceedings against all litigants.

The underlying legal dispute involved the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime statute giving the president authority to detain and remove nationals of countries at war with the United States or invading it. Trump invoked the Act against Venezuelan nationals in March 2025, claiming the Tren de Aragua gang's presence in the United States constituted an invasion. Courts found the deportations unlawful under the Act, but the administration's refusal to comply with multiple court orders complicated enforcement.

The Act hadn't been used since World War II, when applied to Japanese, German, and Italian nationals. Its 2025 invocation against Venezuelan nationals from a country not at war with the United States raised fundamental questions: can the executive branch define invasion and enemy without congressional declaration? The Supreme Court's ruling focused on procedural rights for detainees rather than whether the Act was validly invoked.

The contempt power is courts' primary tool to compel executive compliance with judicial orders. The April 14 ruling changes how this tool works. If initiating a contempt inquiry now requires proving the underlying order was clear and specific, the executive branch gains a new defense: argue that any order it ignored was insufficiently specific.

This creates an incentive for the executive branch to exploit any ambiguity in court orders. An ambiguous order can now block even a fact-finding inquiry. Judge Childs' dissent warned this creates a blueprint for avoiding judicial accountability. The ACLU, which represented the Venezuelan plaintiffs, called the ruling a dangerous precedent that shields executive officials from accountability for defying court orders.

The majority opinion emphasized deference to the executive branch on national security matters. Rao wrote that courts must recognize the paramount necessity of protecting the executive branch from what she called vexatious litigation. This language gave judges a tool to dismiss fact-finding inquiries before they begin, as long as they frame the underlying order as insufficiently specific.

This reasoning differs sharply from prior contempt law, which typically allowed judges to initiate fact-finding before ruling on whether contempt occurred. The ruling establishes a new pre-contempt threshold. Courts must now first determine that an order was sufficiently clear and specific before even conducting an inquiry into whether the order was violated.

The Trump administration had other options for defending against the contempt inquiry. Officials could have claimed they didn't know about Boasberg's written order, or that they acted on legal advice believing the Act gave them authority to proceed. Instead, the administration challenged Boasberg's power to conduct any fact-finding inquiry at all. The 🏛️D.C. Circuit accepted this approach, blocking the inquiry before any facts could be established.