‘Deliberately flouted this Court’s written order’: Judge holds Trump admin in criminal contempt over deportation flights ordered to turn around

A national justice successful Washington, D.C., is holding the Trump medication successful transgression contempt for ignoring his order, issued past month, to crook astir aggregate planes carrying Venezuelan migrants that were being deported without owed process done the president’s unprecedented usage of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA).

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg connected Wednesday said helium had determined that the national authorities demonstrated a “willful disregard” for his bid “sufficient for the Court to reason that probable origin exists to find the Government successful transgression contempt.”

“The Court does not scope specified decision lightly oregon hastily; indeed, it has fixed Defendants ample accidental to rectify oregon explicate their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory,” Boasberg wrote successful a 46-page order. “The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — particularly by officials of a coordinate subdivision who person sworn an oath to uphold it. To licence specified officials to freely ‘annul the judgments of the courts of the United States’ would not conscionable ‘destroy the rights acquired nether those judgments’; it would marque ‘a solemn mockery’ of ‘the constitution itself.’ ‘So fatal a effect indispensable beryllium deprecated by all.'”

On March 15, the ACLU sued for — and won — a impermanent restraining bid barring the medication from deporting individuals nether the AEA. During the exigency hearing, Boasberg issued an oral seat ruling to cease removals nether the auspices of the AEA on with a directive to crook planes astir containing Venezuelan migrants that had taken disconnected soon earlier the proceedings and instrumentality them to the U.S. — an bid that was infamously ignored.

The authorities claimed that the flights had already near U.S. airspace and were truthful extracurricular of the court’s jurisdiction. Administration officials besides asserted that they did not person to travel Boasberg’s oral bid to crook the planes astir due to the fact that helium did not memorialize the directive successful his consequent written order.

Boasberg addressed this straight successful Wednesday’s bid holding the authorities successful contempt.

“Defendants supply nary convincing crushed to debar the decision that appears evident from the supra factual recitation: that they deliberately flouted this Court’s written Order and, separately, its oral bid that explicitly delineated what compliance entailed,” Boasberg wrote. “They bash not quality that it was hours aft the written Order issued erstwhile they disembarked the people members aboard the 2 planes and transferred them retired of U.S. custody. Rather than connection a mea culpa and effort to explicate this sedate mistake and item plans to rectify it, Defendants connection assorted imaginative arguments for wherefore they nevertheless technically complied with the Order. None of their positions withstands scrutiny.”

Hearings and tribunal filings successful the high-profile lawsuit grew progressively contentious arsenic the litigation unfolded until earlier this period erstwhile the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the lawsuit — which was brought successful Washington, D.C., arsenic a class-action suit nether the Administrative Procedures Act — had to person been filed arsenic a habeas corpus lawsuit successful Texas, the territory wherever the plaintiffs were being detained. Habeas petitions impact detainees challenging the legality of their custody and typically seeking to beryllium released.

The tribunal further gave the defendants a accidental to “purge their contempt” if by April 23, they record a declaration “explaining the steps they person taken and volition instrumentality to bash so.”

“If Defendants opt not to purge their contempt, they shall alternatively record by April 23, 2025, declaration(s) identifying the individual(s) who, with cognition of the Court’s classwide Temporary Restraining Order, made the determination not to halt the transportation of people members retired of U.S. custody connected March 15 and 16, 2025,” Boasberg wrote.

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