Appeals Court Orders End to Contempt Probe of Deportation Flights

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered an end to the criminal contempt investigation that Chief Judge James Boasberg opened into whether the Trump administration defied his order to turn around deportation flights carrying Venezuelan migrants, CBS News and the Associated Press reported.

The divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted the administration extraordinary relief. Judge Neomi Rao wrote for the majority that the proceedings “are a clear abuse of discretion,” CBS News reported. In the AP’s account, she said criminal contempt is available only for violating an order that is “clear and specific,” and that Boasberg’s March 2025 order “did not clearly and specifically bar the government from transferring plaintiffs into Salvadoran custody.”

Rao also wrote that the inquiry raised separation-of-powers concerns. According to CBS News, she called it a “judicial intrusion into the autonomy of a co-equal department” that threatened an “open-ended, freewheeling inquiry” into executive decisions on national security and foreign policy. Judge Justin Walker joined her. Both were nominated by President Trump, the AP noted. Judge J. Michelle Childs, a Biden appointee, dissented. “Contempt of court is not addressed for the district court’s vanity,” she wrote, according to CBS News; it is meant to “preserve and enforce our law.”

The case grew out of Mr. Trump’s March 2025 use of the Alien Enemies Act to send more than 200 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador, CBS News reported. On March 15, 2025, Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order barring the transfers under that law, but two planeloads of migrants had already left the U.S. and continued on to El Salvador, both outlets reported. The administration said then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made the decision to proceed. Boasberg, who was nominated by President Obama, found probable cause for criminal contempt and began trying to determine who was responsible.

The administration welcomed the ruling. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote on social media that it “should finally end Judge Boasberg’s year-long campaign against the hardworking Department attorneys,” CBS News reported. The AP said the White House has portrayed Boasberg as a biased judge who overstepped his authority.

Lee Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer for the migrants, called the decision “a blow to the rule of law.” He said that “there is no longer any question that the Trump administration willfully violated the court’s order,” a claim the majority’s reasoning does not address, since its holding rests on the wording of the order. The AP reported that the migrants’ lawyers will ask the full appeals court to review the panel’s decision.

The ruling is the latest turn in a legal fight that has lasted more than a year and has become a flashpoint in the president’s mass deportation campaign. Whether the full circuit takes up the case will determine whether the contempt inquiry is dead or only paused.