April 16 (UPI) — This updated story includes a short statement from a DHS spokeswoman.
Probable cause exists to prosecute members of the Trump administration for criminal contempt for continuing deportation flights to El Salvador on March 15, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg ruled.
Boasberg on Wednesday ruled the “government’s actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for [the court’s] order” after he ruled against the deportation flights conducted under the provisions of the Alien Enemies Act, NBC News reported.
Boasberg is the chief judge at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and was appointed to the federal court by President Barack Obama in 2011. He granted a temporary restraining order motion by attorneys for the deportees and told the Trump administration to order the planes back to the United States.
The deportees were Venezuelans who were accused of being members of Tren de Aragua, which President Donald Trump has named a terrorist organization to enable his administration to deport them under the provisions of the Alien Enemies Act.
“Rather than comply with the court’s order, the government continued the hurried removal operation,” Boasberg wrote in a 46-page filing. “Early on Sunday morning — hours after the order issued — it transferred two planeloads of passengers protected by the [temporary restraining order] into a Salvadoran mega-prison.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the two planes already were in international airspace and outside the federal district court’s jurisdiction when Boasberg ordered them to return to the United States.
Three weeks later, the Supreme Court on April 7 affirmed the Trump administration can deport individuals while using the Alien Enemies Act and vacated Boasberg’s temporary restraining order.
“That court’s later determination that the TRO suffered from a legal defect … does not excuse the government’s violation,” Boasberg wrote. “Instead, it is a foundational legal precept that every judicial order ‘must be obeyed’ — no matter how ‘erroneous’ it ‘may be’ — until a court reverses it,” he said. Boasberg said, “such disobedience is punishable as contempt, notwithstanding any later-revealed deficiencies in the order” when a party chooses to disobey it instead of waiting for it to be reversed through the judicial process.
He said members of the Trump administration continually “evaded” the court’s orders, and he will refer the matter for prosecution if they do not “purge such contempt.”
Trump would have the power to pardon anyone accused of criminal contempt by Boasberg, and some lawmakers have suggested impeaching the federal judge for interfering with immigration and foreign policy.
“The Supreme Court already rebuked him. Lawless,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told UPI in an emailed statement.