The D.C. Circuit stepped in and stopped Judge James Boasberg’s criminal contempt probe into the Trump administration over the March 2025 deportation flights to El Salvador, saying the district court’s order lacked the clarity required to support contempt and that further investigation risked an improper intrusion into executive branch decision-making.
Judge James Boasberg opened a criminal contempt inquiry aimed at officials involved in the transfers of Venezuelan migrants last March, and that effort just ran headlong into the appellate court. The appeals panel found serious legal problems with how the district court framed its orders and warned against expanding the inquiry into sensitive executive deliberations. That ruling undercuts the district court’s posture and puts limits on how judges may police disputes involving national security and foreign relations.
The appeals court majority, speaking through Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, said the contempt proceedings should end because the order Boasberg relied on “did not clearly and specifically bar the government from transferring plaintiffs into Salvadoran custody.” The panel called the district court’s continued investigation an abuse of discretion and emphasized the executive branch’s interests. In short, the court said judges cannot use vague orders as a pretext to probe high-level branch-to-branch decisions.
A federal judge must end his “intrusive” contempt investigation of the Trump administration for failing to comply with an order turn around planes carrying Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador last year, a divided appeals court panel ruled Tuesday.
Chief Judge James Boasberg abused his discretion in forging ahead with criminal contempt proceedings over the March 2025 deportation flights, according to the majority opinion by a three-judge panel from U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
President Donald Trump’s administration has a “clear and indisputable” right to the termination of the contempt proceedings, Circuit Judge Neomi Rao wrote in the court’s majority opinion.
“The legal error at the heart of these criminal contempt proceedings demonstrates why further investigation by the district court is an abuse of discretion,” Rao wrote. “Criminal contempt is available only for the violation of an order that is clear and specific. (Boasberg’s March 2025 order) did not clearly and specifically bar the government from transferring plaintiffs into Salvadoran custody.”
The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland summarized it nicely: Boasberg got spanked. That blunt takeaway captures the tone of how the appeals court rebuked the district court’s approach. Conservatives who worry about judicial overreach will see this as a welcome check on a judge who pushed too far.
The opinion also addressed the broader danger of a district court prying into executive branch deliberations about national security and diplomacy. The appellate panel made clear that pursuing contempt when the underlying order was vacated or legally flawed risks an unconstitutional impairment of the Executive’s role. The court underscored that mandamus relief is appropriate when a judge assumes an antagonistic jurisdiction over executive actions.
A detailed portion of the opinion laid out why the district court’s actions demanded extraordinary relief, noting that the Supreme Court had already vacated the district court’s order because it rested on a legal error and the suit was brought in the wrong forum. The district court nonetheless threatened criminal contempt unless the government complied with the now-vacated order, prompting the appeals court to step in with a writ. That sequence raised the alarm bells about a judge trying to enforce an order that had been legally undermined.
The Supreme Court vacated the district court’s order because it was premised on a legal error and the plaintiffs’ suit was brought in the wrong court. Nonetheless, the district court threatened to hold government officials in criminal contempt unless they complied with the now-vacated order by, for instance, taking back custody of the plaintiffs. We issued a writ of mandamus vacating the court’s first contempt 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. To cooperate, the government identified then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem as the official responsible for the transfer decision. The district court previously said this was the only information it required to make a referral for prosecution. But the district court has now expanded its inquest and ordered hearings to extract more information from government counsel about exactly what happened last March. The government petitions for mandamus.
The widening gyre of the district court’s investigation again calls for the extraordinary remedy of mandamus to halt the judicial “impairment of another branch in the performance of its constitutional duties.” Cheney v. U.S. Dist. Ct. for D.C., 542 U.S. 367, 390 (2004) (cleaned up). The district court proposes to probe high-level Executive Branch deliberations about matters of national security and diplomacy. 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. Moreover, the government has already provided the name of the responsible official, so further judicial investigation is unnecessary and therefore improper. In these circumstances, mandamus is appropriate to prevent the district court from assuming an antagonistic jurisdiction that encroaches on the autonomy of the Executive Branch.
The bottom line is that the appellate court boxed the district court in and stopped an investigation that risked prying into sensitive executive choices. That restraint matters in a system of separated powers where judges must not substitute their judgments for the President’s on foreign transfers. For those who value clear legal limits and defend executive prerogative, this decision is a hard-earned win.
And for anyone still wondering who’s in charge of national security decisions, the message is simple and direct: courts should not be in the business of micromanaging the Executive. This ruling restores a measure of order and prevents a district court from turning vague orders into a vehicle for wholesale executive oversight.
