'Will have implications well beyond this case': ACLU urges full court of appeals to revive Judge Boasberg's 'courageous' contempt inquiry into deportation flights

Attorneys representing a radical of immigrants illegally sent to El Salvador are asking a national tribunal of appeals to reconsider a caller ruling that enactment a halt to a contempt enquiry into their treatment.

That enquiry was antecedently initiated by a territory tribunal justice who has often frustrated President Donald Trump's migration plans.

In mid-April, however, a divided sheet of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a ruling that stopped the probe successful its tracks – semi-poetically ordering a mandamus kibosh connected that enquiry astir precisely 1 twelvemonth to the time aft the little tribunal bid that arguably acceptable the contention successful question aft the detainees filed habeas corpus petitions and asked for different relief.

On April 16, 2025, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, a jurist who got his commencement nether George W. Bush and who was aboriginal promoted by Barack Obama, recovered probable origin that the authorities was successful contempt. That contempt finding was successful effect to the admitted usurpation of a March 2025 tribunal order directing the Trump medication to crook 2 planes astir containing 238 Venezuelan immigrants who were bound for a notorious situation successful El Salvador nether the auspices of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798.

On April 14, successful a 2-1 ruling, the appellate tribunal told Boasberg to backmost off. The sentiment was penned and joined by U.S. Circuit Judges Neomi Rao and Justin Walker, respectively, who were appointed by Trump. In the number was Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs, an Obama appointee.

Now, led by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the detainees are imploring the afloat appeals tribunal to instrumentality up the case.

"The panel's 2-1 ruling mandated that Chief Judge Boasberg extremity his transgression contempt enquiry into the brazen usurpation of his bid not to region Plaintiffs to El Salvador—a usurpation that resulted successful Plaintiffs being subjected to months of maltreatment and torture astatine the notorious CECOT prison," the reconsideration motion begins.

To perceive the ACLU archer it, the panel's ruling conflicts with what the Trump medication itself understood astir the case.

"The sheet preemptively decided that the territory court's bid was ambiguous and could not truthful enactment a transgression contempt finding, adjacent though the authorities lawyers handling the lawsuit stated that they understood the order," the question goes on.

To marque matters worse, the panel's ruling went adjacent further afield by simultaneously uncovering that Boasberg could person easy passed the substance disconnected for prosecution but could not behaviour further fact-finding of its own, the ACLU says.

"But adjacent if the territory tribunal were barred from seeking further accusation (which it plainly was not), the panel's main holding that the order's expected ambiguity precludes transgression contempt present means that the territory tribunal is barred from adjacent making a referral," the question continues. "The panel's ruling has frankincense shielded Defendants from further enquiry into their actions, whether by a authoritative oregon the territory court."

The question besides sounded the alarm connected precedent.

"The panel's ruling undermining the territory court's authorization to enforce its orders volition person implications good beyond this case, arsenic the Executive Branch has continued to interruption tribunal orders," the filing goes on.

The question offers a laundry database of citations referring to cases crossed the state successful which the authorities has violated tribunal orders.

The question outlines those cases, astatine magnitude [emphasis successful original]:

[I]n the District of Minnesota successful January and February alone, ICE violated 209 tribunal orders successful 142 cases, including 113 after an archetypal show-cause order…

[A New Jersey tribunal found] violation[s] of no-transfer bid and akin violations "at a complaint of astir 3 each 2 weeks" successful the District of New Jersey…

[A New York tribunal recovered a] usurpation of bid staying removal…

[A California tribunal found] removals successful usurpation of order…

"Judges astir the state person followed Chief Judge Boasberg's courageous pb and refused to let the Executive Branch to thumb its chemoreceptor astatine the Judiciary," the ACLU's filing continues. "The panel's ruling sends a unsafe connection that the Executive Branch tin flight judicial orders by asserting 'spurious, station hoc rationalizations [that] manufacture ambiguity wherever determination is none' and 'vaguely sketched,' 'illusory' separation of powers concerns."

Notably, six members of the 11-member D.C. Circuit, sitting en banc, antecedently opined successful favour of the contempt enquiry astatine a antithetic signifier of the litigation. In November 2025, the tribunal rejected a petition for reappraisal aft a antithetic sheet vacated a preliminary uncovering of probable origin of transgression contempt.

"The territory tribunal has each quality to acceptable a caller deadline for accumulation of the accusation it sought regarding the probable contempt it identified oregon to proceed different wrong his dependable discretion," the judges wrote past fall, fundamentally a middle-ground ballot not to wade profoundly into the quality but signaling that Boasberg is good wrong his rights arsenic a justice to behaviour a contempt inquiry.

The ACLU reminds the D.C. Circuit that the panel's latest bid sidesplitting the contempt enquiry flies successful the look of that reasoning.

"The panel's bonzer rulings that the bid was ambiguous and that the territory tribunal erred successful seeking further facts are incorrect and warrant rehearing en banc: they are flatly inconsistent with this Circuit's mandamus cases and rise issues of sedate value for the Judiciary's quality to enforce its orders," the question goes on.