U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on Wednesday said he’s once again moving ahead with a contempt investigation into Trump administration officials, seeking to find the people he believes intentionally defied his orders to ground airplanes deporting migrants in March.
The proceeding could signal real problems for the administration, which has been cagey about explaining what happened on March 15, when three planeloads of migrants, including a group of Venezuelans, was sent from the U.S. to El Salvador to be held in a terrorist prison.
Judge Boasberg said he will find out “who exactly gave the orders to defy my ruling.”
“I certainly intend to find out what happened that day,” he told the Justice Department during a hearing in his courtroom.
The issue had been on hold for months while an appeals court pondered the matter. The judges delivered a convoluted denouement last week that Judge Boasberg took as permission to revive his contempt effort.
Tiberius Davis, the Justice Department lawyer arguing the case Wednesday, objected to the entire line of proceeding, saying he didn’t think contempt was warranted or even allowed at this point.
He pointed out that the Supreme Court vacated a key part of Judge Boasberg’s blockade on the deportations. Since the original order was based on a now invalid predicate, he said, the contempt proceedings must fall.
“We think there’s no basis for criminal contempt,” Mr. Davis said.
The March 15 deportations have proved to be a lasting legal problem for the Trump administration. At least some of those on the three flights were being deported under the Alien Enemies Act, a deportation shortcut the administration used to get around the longer process in regular immigration law.
Two of the flights were in the air when Judge Boasberg held a rushed hearing and ordered them grounded. A third took off later.
None of them were returned to the U.S.
On board one of the flights was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man whom the government was pressured to return — though it charged him with a criminal smuggling offense and is now trying to convict and boot him.
Most of the migrants were Venezuelans whom the government accused of being members of Tren de Aragua, a gang the U.S. has declared a foreign terrorist organization.
Many of the migrants have denied ties to TdA. They say their deportations were illegal.
Under a deal, they were sent from El Salvador to Venezuela over the summer.
The American Civil Liberties Union is still fighting to give them a chance to argue for their return to the U.S.
Mr. Davis said that to do that, the migrants would have to be taken back into custody and returned to the U.S. for them to argue their cases.
Judge Boasberg wondered if it would be possible to give them remote hearings.
His role in the proceedings is likely to be a hot issue.
He is the subject of articles of impeachment in the House, and a group of GOP senators has asked that he be suspended from duties while those articles are pending.
Just days before his March ruling in the El Salvador deportation case, he made contentious remarks to a conference of federal judges by suggesting Mr. Trump would “disregard rulings of federal courts” and would foster a “constitutional crisis.”
In recent weeks, it was revealed that Judge Boasberg approved secret warrants to snare cellphone data of a number of Republicans in Congress as part of the Biden administration’s probe of Mr. Trump’s conduct surrounding the 2020 election.
Judge Boasberg, an Obama appointee, is forging ahead anyway. He suggested on Wednesday that he would like to begin proceedings after Thanksgiving and that the first order of business will be to identify the administration officials involved.
He said he would also likely want to hear from Erez Reuveni, who was fired by the Justice Department after he told the judge in the Abrego Garcia civil case that the government wrongly deported the man and was balking at bringing him back.
The DOJ promptly fired Mr. Reuveni, who has turned whistleblower and made explosive claims about government officials plotting to defy Judge Boasberg.
Among his claims is that Emil Bove, a personal lawyer to Trump who was later placed in the Justice Department and has since been confirmed to a federal appeals court seat, instructed the government to defy any judge who might try to halt the Salvador deportation flights.
Mr. Reuveni has also argued that Drew Ensign, the department’s lawyer who was arguing in front of Judge Boasberg on March 15, knew flights were already departing, despite telling the judge otherwise.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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