US court tosses judge’s contempt order over Trump’s El Salvador deportations

An appeals court on Friday tossed out a judge’s finding of contempt against the Trump administration in a case over the notorious deportations of Venezuelans from the US to an El Salvador prison without due process.

The decision from a divided three-judge panel based in the nation’s capital vacates a finding from US district judge James Boasberg.

Boasberg found in April there was probable cause to hold Donald Trump’s administration in criminal contempt of court for willfully disregarding his 15 March order barring the deportations to El Salvador of more than 250 Venezuelans from immigration detention in the US to a brutal prison in the Central American country, under an agreement with the Salvadorian leadership, without the chance to challenge their removals. The Trump administration appealed.

On Friday, Washington DC circuit judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both of whom were nominated by Trump in his first term in the White House, concurred with the unsigned majority opinion. Judge Cornelia Pillard, who was appointed by Barack Obama when he was president, dissented.

Soldiers guard the entrance to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on 4 April 2025. Photograph: Alex Pena/Anadolu via Getty Images

Boasberg had accused Trump administration officials of rushing deportees out of the country under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act before they could challenge their removal in court and then willfully disregarding his order that planes already in the air should return to the US.

The Republican administration has denied violating his order.

“The district court’s order raises troubling questions about judicial control over core executive functions like the conduct of foreign policy and the prosecution of criminal offenses,” circuit judge Katsas wrote in an opinion.

The Trump administration claimed that all the Venezuelans it removed to El Salvador outside the normal constitutional process were violent gang members, which many of the deportees denied and critics said, regardless of any of the individuals’ criminal guilt or innocence, did not justify denying them due process in the US.

The episode has been one of the most high-profile of the second Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda, in addition to widespread raids and arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers in communities across the country.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting