Appeals court to hear contempt fight over Trump deportation flights

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has reopened a fight that cuts to the core of judicial power: whether a federal judge can enforce an order the Trump administration allegedly ignored during March 2025 deportation flights to El Salvador. The case centers on Venezuelan men sent to CECOT, El Salvador’s mega-prison, under Donald Trump’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act against people the administration said were tied to Tren de Aragua.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg later found probable cause to believe the administration had willfully disregarded his order to turn the planes around. He then began a criminal contempt inquiry into who authorized the flights to continue, turning what began as an immigration dispute into a direct separation-of-powers clash between the executive and judicial branches.

Advocacy materials from the American Civil Liberties Union say 137 Venezuelan men were removed to CECOT in the middle of the night in March 2025 without notice or an opportunity to challenge their removal. The ACLU has said the men were held incommunicado after March 15 and should have been able to contest both their designations and their deportations. Other accounts have described the total number of Venezuelans sent in the operation as more than 200.

The transfer campaign did not end with the March flights. On March 31, 2025, the U.S. Department of State said the United States military had moved 17 additional people described as violent criminals from Tren de Aragua and MS-13 to El Salvador in a counterterrorism operation. That announcement deepened the legal and political dispute over how far the administration could go in using emergency powers to move foreign nationals out of U.S. custody and into a foreign prison system.

Boasberg’s contempt inquiry was halted by a divided three-judge D.C. Circuit panel on April 14, 2026, after a long series of appellate maneuvers that had previously frozen, then briefly revived, the probe. The full court has now agreed to hear arguments, a step that could determine how much authority judges retain when executive officials move first and litigate later.

The broader Alien Enemies Act litigation has already drawn Supreme Court intervention and separate rulings on whether the deported Venezuelans can pursue claims over their detention and transfer to El Salvador. For now, the contempt fight remains the sharpest test of whether court orders mean anything when they collide with a high-profile immigration crackdown.