US appeals court throws out Trump contempt ruling over deportation flights

Al Jazeera

3 days ago

A United States appeals court has thrown out a lower judge's determination that the administration of President Donald Trump could face charges for acting in contempt of court during the early days of his mass deportation drive.
The ruling on Friday undid one of the most substantial rebukes to the Trump administration since the start of the president's second term.
The appeals court, however, was split two to one. The majority included two Trump-appointed judges, Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao. The sole dissent was Judge Cornelia Pillard, an appointee from former President Barack Obama.
In a decision for the majority, Rao ruled that the lower court had overstepped its authority in opening the door for Trump officials to be held in contempt.
'The district court's order attempts to control the Executive Branch's conduct of foreign affairs, an area in which a court's power is at its lowest ebb,' Rao wrote.
But Pillard defended the lower court's decision and questioned whether the appeals court was, in fact, eroding judicial authority in favour of increased executive power.
'The majority does an exemplary judge a grave disservice by overstepping its bounds to upend his effort to vindicate the judicial authority that is our shared trust,' she wrote.
Trump administration celebrates decision
The appeals court's decision was hailed as a major victory by the Trump administration, which has long railed against the judicial roadblocks to its agenda.
'@TheJusticeDept attorneys just secured a MAJOR victory defending President Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport illegal alien terrorists,' Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on social media.
'We will continue fighting and WINNING in court for President Trump's agenda to keep America Safe!'
The court battle began in March, when US District Court Judge James Boasberg, based in the District of Columbia, heard arguments about Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan men accused of being gang members.
That law allows for swift deportations of foreign nationals — and has, prior to Trump, only been used in wartime.
Boasberg ruled to pause Trump's use of the law and ordered the administration to halt any deportation flights, including those that may already be in the air.
But two deportation flights carrying about 250 people nevertheless landed in El Salvador after the ruling.
The Trump administration maintained it was unable to safely reroute the flights and expressed confusion about whether Boasberg's verbal order was binding.
It also questioned whether Boasberg had the authority to intervene. Trump went so far as to call for Boasberg's removal, writing on Truth Social in March: 'This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges' I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!'
Weighing penalties for contempt
In April, Boasberg determined that the Trump administration's actions showed a 'willful disregard' for his ruling. He concluded that 'probable cause exists to find the government in criminal contempt'.
A contempt finding can result in various sanctions, including fines and prison time, although it remains unclear what penalties the Trump administration could have faced.
'The court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily,' Boasberg continued. 'Indeed, it has given defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory.'
Trump's Department of Justice, for its part, maintained that Boasberg had tread on the president's executive power in issuing the order.
Also in April, the US Supreme Court lifted Boasberg's temporary restraining orders against using the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members.
But it nevertheless ruled that the targeted immigrants 'are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal' before their deportations.
The Trump administration has faced persistent scrutiny over whether it was complying with that order, as well as other decisions from lower courts that interfered with its deportation campaign.
Critics have accused the president and his allies of simply ignoring rulings they disagreed with, raising questions of contempt in other cases, as well.
Inside Friday's appeals court ruling
But the two Trump-appointed judges on the appeals court, Katsas and Rao, upheld the Trump administration's position that Boasberg's rulings had gone too far.
'The district court's order raises troubling questions about judicial control over core executive functions like the conduct of foreign policy and the prosecution of criminal offenses,' Katsas wrote.
He compared Boasberg's order to recall the deportation flights to a district court's order in July 1973 that sought to halt the US bombing of Cambodia. Within hours, however, the Supreme Court upheld a stay on that opinion, allowing the bombing to proceed.
'Any freestanding order to turn planes around mid-air would have been indefensible,' Katsas wrote, citing that 1973 case.
But Pillard — the Obama-appointed judge — offered a counterargument in her dissent, pointing out that the US is not currently at war.
She also noted that the Venezuelan men who were deported on the March flights had, by and large, not faced criminal charges. Yet, the US had chosen to deport them to El Salvador for imprisonment in a maximum-security facility with a history of human rights abuses.
'Whatever one might think about a Supreme Court Justice's emergency order superintending an ongoing military operation, the authority of a federal district court to temporarily restrain government officials from transferring presumptively noncriminal detainees to a foreign prison without any pre-removal process is well recognized,' Pillard wrote.
The appeals court's decision comes just days after the Department of Justice announced it had filed a formal complaint against Boasberg, accusing him of misconduct for public comments he made criticising the Trump administration's approach to the judiciary.
Critics have called the complaint a blatant retaliation and evidence of an increasing politicalisation of the Justice Department.