Appeals Court Terminates Criminal Contempt Proceedings Against Trump Admin

Authored by Stacy Robinson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

An appeals court has put a stop to criminal contempt proceedings initiated by a district judge against the Trump administration.

An appeals court has put a stop to criminal contempt proceedings initiated by a district judge against the Trump administration.

In a brief, unsigned order on April 14, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated a previous order by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, and ordered him to terminate the contempt investigation he launched in December.

“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 wrote on X.

The contempt proceedings stemmed from the deportation of illegal immigrants—suspected gang members—to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, last year. Boasberg had ordered planes carrying those detainees halted and turned around, but the men were sent to El Salvador anyway.

The Trump administration had appealed Boasberg’s order all the way to the Supreme Court, which overturned his ruling. Despite that, Boasberg tried to hold members of the administration in contempt of his order unless they returned the suspected gang members to the United States.

Boasberg reasoned that, though the Supreme Court ruled his previous order was in error, that didn’t excuse the federal government from violating it ahead of time.

“I certainly intend to find out what happened on that day,” Boasberg told attorneys for the Department of Justice (DOJ) at the Nov. 19, 2025, proceedings. He asked the government to identify who made the decision to go ahead with the deportations.

Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made the decision, the Trump administration later informed the court.

But Boasberg was unsatisfied and “the district court again moved the goalposts,” Circuit Judge Neomi Rao wrote. On Dec. 8, 2025, Boasberg ordered a further investigation to find out whether Noem’s decision was a “willful violation” of his order.

“Undeterred, the district court is proceeding with criminal contempt for the government’s decision to transfer the plaintiffs to the custody of El Salvador,” Rao wrote.

She added that the Appeals Court needed to intervene again “to prevent the district court from assuming an antagonistic jurisdiction that encroaches on the autonomy of the Executive Branch.”

In a 2–1 decision, the appeals court ruled that Boasberg, by ordering an inquiry into why his order was defied, was trying “to probe high-level Executive Branch deliberations about matters of national security and diplomacy.”

Apart from that, Rao wrote, the government did not violate Boasberg’s written order by turning the deportees over to the El Salvadoran government.

“These proceedings are a clear abuse of discretion, as the district court’s order said nothing about transferring custody of the plaintiffs and therefore lacks the clarity to support criminal contempt based on the transfer of custody,” she wrote.

In a dissenting opinion, Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs said the question wasn’t quite so simple and that Boasberg was right to order further investigation. She cited a transcript of Boasberg’s oral order—given a little while before his written order was issued—in which he plainly told the government to bring the detainees back to the United States.

“However that’s accomplished, whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you,” Boasberg had told DOJ attorney Drew Ensign during an emergency hearing last March.

Childs also wrote that the April 14 ruling sets a dangerous precedent.

“Now, any litigant can argue, based on their preferred interpretation of a court’s order, that they did not commit contempt before contempt findings are even made,” she wrote.