Appeals court poised to allow contempt probe of DHS deportation flights to El Salvador

Filed 1h ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

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Four Beers' Polka

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland · No restrictions · via Wikimedia Commons

A federal appeals court heard arguments over whether U.S. District Judge James Boasberg can continue investigating Trump officials for possible criminal contempt after more than 100 Venezuelan men were deported to El Salvador's CECOT prison in defiance of a restraining order. The Justice Department has named only former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem as responsible, but judges including J. Michelle Childs and Patricia Millett questioned why lawyers who advised her, including now-Attorney General Todd Blanche, shouldn't also face scrutiny.

The men were held for four months before release in a prisoner exchange with Venezuela. A whistleblower account says Emil Bove, then a senior DOJ official now sitting on the Third Circuit, told colleagues the administration might have to tell courts an obscenity rather than comply, an account Bove denied at his confirmation hearing.

DOJ attorney Brett Shumate argued Boasberg has overstepped by probing officials' mental states rather than just identifying a decisionmaker, calling that role one for prosecutors, not judges. The ACLU's Lee Gelernt countered that the March 2025 order clearly barred the transfers and that Boasberg should be free to find out who else defied it.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Handing the government one name and calling the matter closed is a neat trick if you can get a court to buy it, since somebody always gives the order but somebody else usually types up the legal cover first. The judges seem to have noticed that a chain has more than one link. Watching the Justice Department argue that a judge investigating defiance of the judge's own order is the real overreach takes a certain kind of nerve.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: Four Beers' Polka · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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