'Will have implications well beyond this case': ACLU urges full court of appeals to revive Judge Boasberg's 'courageous' contempt inquiry into deportation flights

Attorneys representing a group of immigrants illegally sent to El Salvador are asking a federal court of appeals to reconsider a recent ruling that put a stop to a contempt inquiry into their treatment.

That inquiry was previously initiated by a district court judge who has often frustrated President Donald Trump's immigration plans.

In mid-April, however, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a ruling that stopped the investigation in its tracks – semi-poetically ordering a mandamus kibosh on that inquiry almost exactly one year to the day after the lower court order that arguably set the controversy in motion after the detainees filed habeas corpus petitions and asked for other relief.

On April 16, 2025, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, a jurist who got his start under George W. Bush and who was later promoted by Barack Obama, found probable cause that the government was in contempt. That contempt finding was in response to the admitted violation of a March 2025 court order directing the Trump administration to turn two planes around containing 238 Venezuelan immigrants who were bound for a notorious prison in El Salvador under the auspices of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798.

On April 14, in a 2-1 ruling, the appellate court told Boasberg to back off. The opinion was penned and joined by U.S. Circuit Judges Neomi Rao and Justin Walker, respectively, who were appointed by Trump. In the minority was Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs, an Obama appointee.

Now, led by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the detainees are imploring the full appeals court to take up the case.

"The panel's 2-1 ruling mandated that Chief Judge Boasberg end his criminal contempt inquiry into the brazen violation of his order not to remove Plaintiffs to El Salvador—a violation that resulted in Plaintiffs being subjected to months of abuse and torture at the notorious CECOT prison," the reconsideration motion begins.

To hear the ACLU tell it, the panel's ruling conflicts with what the Trump administration itself understood about the case.

"The panel preemptively decided that the district court's order was ambiguous and could not therefore support a criminal contempt finding, even though the government lawyers handling the case stated that they understood the order," the motion goes on.

To make matters worse, the panel's ruling went even further afield by simultaneously finding that Boasberg could have easily passed the matter off for prosecution but could not conduct additional fact-finding of its own, the ACLU says.

"But even if the district court were barred from seeking additional information (which it plainly was not), the panel's principal holding that the order's supposed ambiguity precludes criminal contempt now means that the district court is barred from even making a referral," the motion continues. "The panel's ruling has thus shielded Defendants from further inquiry into their actions, whether by a prosecutor or the district court."

The motion also sounded the alarm on precedent.

"The panel's ruling undermining the district court's authority to enforce its orders will have implications well beyond this case, as the Executive Branch has continued to violate court orders," the filing goes on.

The motion offers a laundry list of citations referring to cases across the country in which the government has violated court orders.

The motion outlines those cases, at length [emphasis in original]:

[I]n the District of Minnesota in January and February alone, ICE violated 209 court orders in 142 cases, including 113 after an initial show-cause order…[A New Jersey court found] violation[s] of no-transfer order and similar violations "at a rate of around three every two weeks" in the District of New Jersey…[A New York court found a] violation of order staying removal…[A California court found] removals in violation of order…

"Judges around the country have followed Chief Judge Boasberg's courageous lead and refused to allow the Executive Branch to thumb its nose at the Judiciary," the ACLU's filing continues. "The panel's ruling sends a dangerous message that the Executive Branch can escape judicial orders by asserting 'spurious, post hoc rationalizations [that] manufacture ambiguity where there is none' and 'vaguely sketched,' 'illusory' separation of powers concerns."

Notably, six members of the 11-member D.C. Circuit, sitting en banc, previously opined in favor of the contempt inquiry at a different stage of the litigation. In November 2025, the court rejected a request for review after a different panel vacated a preliminary finding of probable cause of criminal contempt.

"The district court has every ability to set a new deadline for production of the information it sought regarding the probable contempt it identified or to proceed otherwise within his sound discretion," the judges wrote last fall, essentially a middle-ground vote not to wade deeply into the dispute but signaling that Boasberg is well within his rights as a judge to conduct a contempt inquiry.

The ACLU reminds the D.C. Circuit that the panel's latest order killing the contempt inquiry flies in the face of that reasoning.

"The panel's extraordinary rulings that the order was ambiguous and that the district court erred in seeking further facts are wrong and warrant rehearing en banc: they are flatly inconsistent with this Circuit's mandamus cases and raise issues of grave importance for the Judiciary's ability to enforce its orders," the motion goes on.