A federal appeals court has once again slapped down U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, ruling 2-1 that his criminal contempt investigation into Trump administration officials over deportation flights was an abuse of discretion and must be terminated immediately.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals found that Boasberg's pursuit of contempt charges against executive branch officials rested on an order too ambiguous to enforce and one the Supreme Court had already vacated. The ruling marks the second time the appellate court has rebuked the Obama-appointed judge in the same immigration case, a pattern that has fueled Republican calls for his impeachment and raised pointed questions about whether one district judge can wage an extended legal campaign against a sitting administration's enforcement priorities.
The dispute traces back to March 2025, when Boasberg issued an order related to the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. The Trump administration carried out removal flights, and Boasberg moved to hold officials in probable criminal contempt, issuing an April 16 order that named executive branch personnel for potential prosecution.
The problem, as the appeals court saw it, was fundamental. The Supreme Court had already lifted Boasberg's flight ban before he issued the contempt threat. Trump-appointed Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas, writing for the court in an earlier phase of the case, called it an "improper use of the contempt power," as the New York Post reported.
Katsas wrote that the district court's order improperly attempted to control executive branch conduct of foreign affairs, "an area in which a court's power is at its lowest ebb."
That alone would have been a stinging rebuke. But Boasberg pressed forward with the contempt investigation anyway, prompting the administration to return to the appellate court for relief a second time.
The second ruling landed harder. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, joined by Judge Justin Walker, both Trump appointees, found that Boasberg's contempt proceedings suffered from a fatal legal defect: his original March 2025 order did not clearly and specifically bar the government from transferring migrants into Salvadoran custody. Without a clear order, there can be no valid contempt finding. AP News reported that the majority opinion found the investigation was an abuse of discretion and ordered it terminated.
Rao did not hold back in her 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."
She went further, writing that the Trump administration has a "clear and indisputable" right to the termination of the contempt proceedings. In a passage that underscored just how far outside normal judicial practice Boasberg had ventured, Rao noted the case was without precedent.
"This case is highly unusual, and I have found no other like it, perhaps because no district court has threatened criminal contempt against Executive Branch officials as a backdoor to coercing compliance with an order that has been vacated by the Supreme Court."
That line, as Newsmax detailed, captured the core constitutional problem: a single district judge attempting to use the contempt power to enforce an order that no longer existed in law.
The ruling drew swift and pointed reactions from Trump administration officials who had spent months under the shadow of potential criminal contempt referrals. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche did not hold back, framing the decision as the end of an extended judicial harassment campaign.
"Today's decision by the DC Circuit should finally end Judge Boasberg's year-long campaign against the hardworking Department attorneys doing their jobs fighting illegal immigration."
Attorney General Pam Bondi was equally blunt, calling Boasberg's original contempt order "[f]ailed judicial overreach at its worst."
The government had argued throughout the litigation that Boasberg's orders put officials in an impossible bind. Katsas agreed, writing in the earlier ruling that "the government correctly says it has been put to a Hobson's choice: comply with an invalid order or name Executive Branch officials for the initiation of criminal contempt proceedings." That framing resonated with the broader conservative legal argument that district judges have increasingly weaponized procedural tools to obstruct lawful executive action.
The pattern is not limited to Boasberg's courtroom. Federal judges have blocked Trump-aligned immigration enforcement efforts in multiple jurisdictions, creating a patchwork of injunctions that critics say amounts to judicial policy-making.
Boasberg's record in the deportation flight litigation has become a case study in judicial overreach corrected by higher courts. Just the News documented the pattern, noting that the judge has repeatedly ruled against the Trump administration only to be reversed or overruled on appeal.
George Mason University law professor Rob Luther summed up the trajectory in five words: "Another day, another reversal of Judge Boasberg." Fox News reported that the latest ruling has intensified Republican calls for Boasberg's impeachment, with lawmakers pointing to the repeated reversals as evidence that the judge is operating outside the bounds of legitimate judicial authority.
The contempt saga also fits a broader pattern of Obama-appointed judges issuing aggressive rulings against the Trump administration that do not survive appellate review. Even some liberal legal scholars have pushed back on rulings from Obama-era judges targeting Trump lawyers, suggesting the judiciary's credibility suffers when district courts appear to be picking political fights they cannot win on the merits.
The D.C. Circuit's decision carries implications well beyond the Boasberg litigation. By holding that a district court cannot use criminal contempt proceedings to enforce a vacated order, the appeals court reinforced a basic structural principle: the contempt power is a tool for enforcing valid judicial orders, not a mechanism for second-guessing executive branch policy after higher courts have spoken.
Rao's opinion explicitly flagged the separation-of-powers dimension, writing that "the district court's order exceeds the contempt power and intrudes on the powers of the Executive Branch." That language tracks the Supreme Court's own reasoning when it lifted Boasberg's original flight ban, signaling that courts must tread carefully when their orders touch foreign affairs and national security.
For the Trump administration, the ruling validates its aggressive posture in using the Alien Enemies Act to remove criminal migrants. Bondi and Blanche have both framed the deportation flights as core executive functions that courts lack authority to micromanage, and the D.C. Circuit's repeated interventions on the administration's behalf lend legal weight to that position.
The administration has shown a willingness to press its advantage across multiple legal fronts. The activation of a dormant Clinton-era terrorism court for the first time in three decades signaled that the White House views the federal judiciary as a venue for advancing its enforcement agenda, not merely defending against challenges.
Meanwhile, appellate courts have increasingly sided with the administration when lower courts attempt to block executive action. The Third Circuit recently cleared the path for a high-profile deportation case in another 2-1 ruling that reversed a district court, reinforcing the trend of appellate panels correcting lower-court overreach in immigration disputes.
Republican lawmakers have seized on the Boasberg reversals to renew calls for judicial accountability. While impeachment of a federal judge remains rare and procedurally difficult, the political pressure reflects genuine frustration with what conservatives view as a subset of district judges who treat their courtrooms as staging grounds for resistance to elected government.
Boasberg's position is unusual even by the standards of contentious Trump-era litigation. Most judges who issue controversial rulings face criticism but are not reversed twice in the same case on the same basic question. The D.C. Circuit's willingness to use words like "abuse of discretion," "improper," and "unprecedented" signals a level of appellate displeasure that goes beyond routine disagreement on the law.
Investigators and legal observers will need to determine whether Boasberg complies promptly with the mandate to terminate the contempt proceedings or attempts further procedural maneuvers. The appeals court's language leaves little room for creative reinterpretation, but the judge's track record in this case suggests the administration is not taking anything for granted.
When a district judge loses the same fight twice at the appellate level and gets called unprecedented for all the wrong reasons, the question stops being whether the judge was wrong. It becomes whether anyone in a position of authority plans to do something about it.
