Left: Donald Trump speaks at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, DC, in June 2024 (Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP). Right: Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg (U.S. District Courts). Inset: Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks during a news conference at the Nashville International Airport, Thursday, July 17, 2025, in Nashville, Tennessee (AP Photo/George Walker IV).
The Trump administration is claiming it did not violate a court order by refusing to recall flights carrying Venezuelan migrants being deported to a notorious terrorist prison in El Salvador despite a judge explicitly instructing the flights to turn around. The detainees were shipped out of the U.S. with little or no due process through President Donald Trump”s unprecedented use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA).
The administration defended its conduct in a five-page court filing on Tuesday, which also revealed for the first time that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem ultimately made the decision to disregard the verbal order from Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in March. The filing came in response to Boasberg’s ongoing inquiry into whether the administration should be held in criminal contempt for disregarding his order.
The crux of the administration’s position is that Boasberg’s March 15 verbal order directing that the deportees “be returned to the United States” was “superseded” by his subsequent written order, which was issued less than an hour later and only enjoined the administration “from removing” migrants pursuant to the AEA. Because the flights had already left U.S. airspace, officials concluded that the detainees had already “been removed” from the country and could therefore be turned over to the custody of El Salvador.
According to the filing, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign “promptly conveyed” Boasberg’s orders — both verbal and written — to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and then-Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, both of whom were previously employed as Trump’s personal attorneys. Bove has since been confirmed as a federal appellate judge.
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Blanche and Bove provided legal advice regarding the already-departed flights to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through its acting general counsel, Joseph Mazzara. Mazzara then conveyed that advice as well as his own advice to Noem, who then “directed that the AEA detainees who had been removed from the United States before the Court’s order could be transferred to the custody of El Salvador.”
The justification for Noem’s decision, per Tuesday’s filing, is that the judge’s verbal directive was not a binding order.
“That decision was lawful and was consistent with a reasonable interpretation of the Court’s order,” Tiberius Davis, counsel to the assistant attorney general, wrote in the filing. “Although the substance of the legal advice given to DHS and Secretary Noem is privileged, the Government has repeatedly explained in its briefs — both in this Court and on appeal — why its actions did not violate the Court’s order, much less constitute contempt. Specifically, the Court’s written order did not purport to require the return of detainees who had already been removed, and the earlier oral directive was not a binding injunction, especially after the written order.”
The administration also cited a recent appellate court concurrence to characterize Boasberg’s oral directives during the March 15 hearing as being “inconsistent, ‘garbled,’ and, if read in isolation, ‘indefensible.'”
“All of that confirms that it was appropriate to construe the written order as having superseded any oral directives, even assuming the latter ‘can ever be binding,'” the filing states.
Boasberg in April concluded there was probable cause “to find the Government in criminal contempt.” The judge appears ready to return to those proceedings after the D.C. Circuit lifted a monthslong hold on the case earlier this month.
Possible witnesses during the contempt proceedings include Bove, Ensign, and a former DOJ attorney who was fired after admitting in another high-profile immigration case that migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia was one of several men deported to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”
