So what if they defy a judge
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They went there.
President Donald Trump's administration made a calculated decision to ignore a judge's directive to turn around two flights containing hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The verbal order from the chief judge of the Washington, D.C., District Court, James Boasberg, explicitly told the government to turn around any aircraft that had already departed the country if it was still in the air.
"You shall inform your clients of this immediately any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States," Boasberg said during a hearing on Saturday. "However that's accomplished, turning around the plane, or not embarking anyone on the plane. … This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately."
Finding the deportations would cause irreparable harm, Boasberg barred the Trump administration from deporting "all non-citizens who are subject to the AEA proclamation" for at least 14 days, imposing a temporary restraining order or TRO.
During that time, while the lawsuit makes its way through the courts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is meant to keep the noncitizens in its custody.
However, top lawyers and officials in the administration made the determination that since the flights were over international waters, Boasberg's order did not apply.
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The war-time law gives the executive extreme immense power to deport noncitizens without a judicial hearing. But it has been little-used, particularly in peacetime.
"It's the showdown that was always going to happen between the two branches of government," a senior White House official said. "And it seemed that this was pretty clean. You have Venezuelan gang members ... These are bad guys, as the president would say."
How it happened: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller "orchestrated" the process in the West Wing in tandem with Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem. Few outside their teams knew what was happening.It's unclear how many of the roughly 250 Venezuelans were deported under the Alien Enemies Act and how many were kicked out of the U.S. due to other immigration laws.
It's also not clear whether all of them were actually gang members.
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/16/trump-white-house-defy-judge-deport-venezuelans
No due process. Just "we said they're bad guys and they have to go".
This is unreal. And terrifying.
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
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The dog ate my homework.
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The war-time law gives the executive extreme immense power to deport noncitizens without a judicial hearing. But it has been little-used, particularly in peacetime.
"It's the showdown that was always going to happen between the two branches of government," a senior White House official said. "And it seemed that this was pretty clean. You have Venezuelan gang members ... These are bad guys, as the president would say."
How it happened: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller "orchestrated" the process in the West Wing in tandem with Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem. Few outside their teams knew what was happening.It's unclear how many of the roughly 250 Venezuelans were deported under the Alien Enemies Act and how many were kicked out of the U.S. due to other immigration laws.
It's also not clear whether all of them were actually gang members.
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/16/trump-white-house-defy-judge-deport-venezuelans
No due process. Just "we said they're bad guys and they have to go".
This is unreal. And terrifying.
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I keep thinking it can’t get worse. And then it does. Now the administration is trying to remove the judge.
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Franco Caraballo called his wife Friday night, crying and panicked. Hours earlier, the 26-year-old barber and dozens of other Venezuelan migrants at a federal detention facility in Texas were dressed in white clothes, handcuffed and taken onto a plane. He had no idea where he was going.
Twenty-four hours later, Caraballo’s name disappeared from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s online detainee locator.
On Monday, his wife, Johanny Sánchez, learned Caraballo was among more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants flown over the weekend to El Salvador, where they are in a maximum-security prison after being accused by the Trump administration of belonging to the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang.
Sánchez insists her husband isn’t a gang member. She struggles even to find logic in the accusation.
U.S. officials acknowledged in a court filing Monday that many people sent to El Salvador do not have criminal records, though they insisted all are suspected gang members.
“The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat,” said a sworn declaration in the filing, adding that along with their suspected gang membership “the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose.”
https://apnews.com/article/trump-deportations-gang-venezuela-0cf2c3a26d7f4bafa87ad6ca5a640313
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And Vance is scary as hell. What they want is the total abolishment of the administrative state, as if the industrial revolution had never happened.
In a 2021 interview with Politico, Vance said Trump – if he were re-elected – should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, [and] every civil servant in the administrative state … and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-deportation-court-ruling
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About the radical left wing judge.
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Venezuela will once again accept repatriation flights from the United States carrying its deported nationals after reaching an agreement with the U.S., a Venezuelan official said on social media Saturday.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro suspended flights on March 8, after the U.S. Treasury Department announced the withdrawal of Chevron’s license to export Venezuelan oil.
“We have agreed with the U.S. government to resume the repatriation of Venezuelan migrants with an initial flight tomorrow, Sunday,” said Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s Assembly and Maduro’s chief negotiator with the U.S.
Venezuela accepted the deal to guarantee the “the return of our compatriots to their nation with the safeguard of their Human Rights,” Rodríguez said..
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US District Judge James Boasberg ruled Wednesday that “probable cause exists” to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt for violating his orders in mid-March halting the use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.
The long-awaited decision on Wednesday from a judge President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly attacked puts the administration on the path toward being punished for thwarting court orders.
This undated photo provided by CASA, an immigrant advocacy organization, in April 2025, shows Kilmar Abrego Garcia. (CASA via AP)
The situation has been a major political and legal flashpoint for the Trump White House in its efforts to carry out a historic deportation campaign, especially in mid-March when it sent three planes of migrants to a prison in El Salvador. That same day, Boasberg held an emergency hearing and told the administration to pause the migrant removals and order the return of deportation flights back to the US.
“The Court ultimately determines that the Government’s actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt,” Boasberg wrote in a 46-page ruling detailing his decision.
“The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions,” he added. “None of their responses has been satisfactory.”
CNN legal analyst Steve Vladeck said these moves are rare.
“Holding federal executive branch officials in criminal contempt is just about unheard of, once in a blue moon,” said Vladeck, a professor at the University of Georgetown School of Law. “Part of why Chief Judge Boasberg is moving cautiously is because he’s trying to walk a tightrope, not letting the government off the hook for its misbehavior, but also not provoking pushback from either the DC Circuit or the Supreme Court.”
Skye Perryman, an attorney with Democracy Forward, which, along with the ACLU, brought the case before Boasberg, said Wednesday’s ruling “affirms what we have long known: the government’s conduct in this case is unlawful and a threat to people and our constitution.”com/2025/04/16/politics/boasberg-contempt-deportation-flights/index.html
