The U.S. Department of Justice has asked a federal appeals court to stop a contempt proceeding initiated by a Washington, D.C. trial judge who concluded that federal immigration authorities may have violated his order by deporting dozens of Venezuelan detainees on the same day the order was issued.
In a filing submitted April 17, government lawyers urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to stay the contempt finding entered one day earlier by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg. The order followed a March deportation operation that took place hours after Boasberg signed a temporary restraining order barring removal of the five named plaintiffs in the case and similarly situated individuals.
Boasberg concluded in a 79-page opinion that there is probable cause to believe the U.S. government committed criminal contempt when it transferred those individuals, who were detained at the Alexandria, Louisiana ICE facility, to El Salvador. The transfers occurred before the public had access to the proclamation on which the government based its removal authority. The proclamation, issued by former President Donald Trump under the Alien Enemies Act, designated the Tren de Aragua gang as a threat to national security.
“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — particularly by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn to uphold it,” Boasberg wrote. He noted that the Department of Homeland Security had ordered the deportation flights before the TRO was issued, but chose not to cancel them even after the order became effective.
In its request for a stay, DOJ attorneys said the judge’s contempt finding rests on a legally flawed premise and warned that it poses a threat to the separation of powers. “The district court’s contempt order is both procedurally improper and substantively meritless,” they argued. The department maintains that because the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the TRO just days after it was issued, any contempt finding should be rendered void.
Boasberg rejected that logic in his ruling. “Even an order that is subsequently overturned by a higher court must be obeyed while it remains in effect,” he wrote.
The underlying case, J.G.G. et al. v. Trump, was filed at 1:10 a.m. on March 15, hours before the proclamation was posted publicly. The TRO was signed at 9:40 a.m. that morning. But the record indicates that two flights carrying the plaintiffs and other Venezuelans had already departed for El Salvador.
Plaintiffs claim that the removals were intentionally rushed to prevent court intervention. In his opinion, Boasberg pointed to email exchanges and timeline records that suggest “the Government continued the hurried removal operation” after the order was issued. By early March 16, two planeloads of detainees had arrived at a prison facility in El Salvador.
In their appeal, DOJ attorneys say the trial court relied on an “improvised procedure” that failed to comply with the requirements of Rule 42 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which governs contempt actions. They also claim the order could have “a chilling effect” on immigration enforcement.
The appeals court has not yet ruled on the stay request. If the contempt finding proceeds, it could result in one of the rarest outcomes in federal judicial history: criminal proceedings against executive branch officials for defying a court order.
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