James Boasberg isn’t a “radical left lunatic,” and that makes him all the more challenging for Trump.
By the end of the hearing, which was adjourned for about an hour so the government could figure out if any planes carrying migrants had departed, Boasberg made up his mind. “I am prepared to rule,” he said, before proceeding to issue a pair of orders preventing anyone covered by the proclamation from being deported. It was followed by this directive: “Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States.” He left the details up to the government. “However that’s accomplished, whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you. But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”
The Trump administration didn’t comply. And in the weeks since, Boasberg and the Justice Department have been in a standoff, with the judge demanding an explanation for why his orders weren’t followed, and the government claiming that once the planes were in the air, there was nothing to be done. “No court has the power to compel the President to return them, and there is no sound basis to read the Court’s minute order as requiring that unprecedented step,” the department wrote last week. On Thursday, Boasberg will hold yet another hearing to get to the bottom of things and potentially determine if holding the government in contempt is warranted.
How Boasberg rules there, and how the administration responds, will be the first true test of whether the constitutional order that Trump has spent every day of his second term attacking will hold. At a moment when people the nation over are being abducted off the streets or receiving notice that their days here are numbered, without a semblance of even an opportunity to be heard, how Boasberg holds the government to our most basic shared commitments may yet set the tone for the next four years.
Trump has called the judge a “radical left lunatic,” a “troublemaker,” and an “agitator,” to name but a few descriptors the president has used in one of his many Truth Social posts complaining about judges who don’t rule as he would like. Boasberg, who has kept a steady hand over every proceeding and ruling since, appears up for the challenge of judging the administration, applying the same rigor to the case that those who have watched him up close have seen in his more than 20 years as a judge.
To wit, in a recent ruling he threaded something of a legal needle. Rather than deciding whether courts have the authority to second-guess a president’s invocation of a wartime statute that “lay dormant for 75 years” following World War II, Boasberg — in a studious 37-page opinion that was rich with facts, law, history, and the judge’s own reservations about “a host of complicated legal issues” — boosted Trump in ways that would shock House Speaker Mike Johnson, who all but threatened to defund the court where the judge sits. He fully affirmed that the law the president invoked, the Alien Enemies Act, is constitutional. He did not question that the president has the authority to detain people subject to the law or a proclamation Trump issued earlier this month invoking it. He also noted that none of his court orders thus far, which the Justice Department has fiercely contested and are now at the Supreme Court, prevented the administration from rapidly deporting people who were, in fact, members of Tren de Aragua, the transnational Venezuelan gang Trump targeted with his proclamation. Or that the government couldn’t apprehend other noncitizens who may be subject to Trump’s proclamation. His own orders, Boasberg added, don’t even require a single person to be released.
After reviewing the relevant precedents, Boasberg only had one objection: “It follows that summary deportation following close on the heels of the Government’s informing an alien that he is subject to the Proclamation — without giving him the opportunity to consider whether to voluntarily self-deport or challenge the basis for the order — is unlawful.” That’s it.
Boasberg has ordered the administration to explain whether his orders have been violated. In response, the government has done everything but cooperate: It has invoked the state-secrets privilege, essentially telling the judge that he’s entitled to no additional information about the flights he ordered returned; has accused him of misconduct and wants him removed from the case; and has argued that a federal court has no power over how the president exercises his authority abroad. In the coming days, the Supreme Court will have a say on how Boasberg has been ruling and conducting himself in these proceedings so far. Implicit in the Court’s judgment, because the issue is not directly before it, is how the weakest and least dangerous branch deals with the branch that wields executive power, controls the military, and has all the guns and the enforcement authority — and is headed by a president who appears ready to defy it.
By the end of the hearing, which was adjourned for about an hour so the government could figure out if any planes carrying migrants had departed, Boasberg made up his mind. “I am prepared to rule,” he said, before proceeding to issue a pair of orders preventing anyone covered by the proclamation from being deported. It was followed by this directive: “Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States.” He left the details up to the government. “However that’s accomplished, whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you. But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”
The Trump administration didn’t comply. And in the weeks since, Boasberg and the Justice Department have been in a standoff, with the judge demanding an explanation for why his orders weren’t followed, and the government claiming that once the planes were in the air, there was nothing to be done. “No court has the power to compel the President to return them, and there is no sound basis to read the Court’s minute order as requiring that unprecedented step,” the department wrote last week. On Thursday, Boasberg will hold yet another hearing to get to the bottom of things and potentially determine if holding the government in contempt is warranted.
How Boasberg rules there, and how the administration responds, will be the first true test of whether the constitutional order that Trump has spent every day of his second term attacking will hold. At a moment when people the nation over are being abducted off the streets or receiving notice that their days here are numbered, without a semblance of even an opportunity to be heard, how Boasberg holds the government to our most basic shared commitments may yet set the tone for the next four years.
Trump has called the judge a “radical left lunatic,” a “troublemaker,” and an “agitator,” to name but a few descriptors the president has used in one of his many Truth Social posts complaining about judges who don’t rule as he would like. Boasberg, who has kept a steady hand over every proceeding and ruling since, appears up for the challenge of judging the administration, applying the same rigor to the case that those who have watched him up close have seen in his more than 20 years as a judge.
To wit, in a recent ruling he threaded something of a legal needle. Rather than deciding whether courts have the authority to second-guess a president’s invocation of a wartime statute that “lay dormant for 75 years” following World War II, Boasberg — in a studious 37-page opinion that was rich with facts, law, history, and the judge’s own reservations about “a host of complicated legal issues” — boosted Trump in ways that would shock House Speaker Mike Johnson, who all but threatened to defund the court where the judge sits. He fully affirmed that the law the president invoked, the Alien Enemies Act, is constitutional. He did not question that the president has the authority to detain people subject to the law or a proclamation Trump issued earlier this month invoking it. He also noted that none of his court orders thus far, which the Justice Department has fiercely contested and are now at the Supreme Court, prevented the administration from rapidly deporting people who were, in fact, members of Tren de Aragua, the transnational Venezuelan gang Trump targeted with his proclamation. Or that the government couldn’t apprehend other noncitizens who may be subject to Trump’s proclamation. His own orders, Boasberg added, don’t even require a single person to be released.
After reviewing the relevant precedents, Boasberg only had one objection: “It follows that summary deportation following close on the heels of the Government’s informing an alien that he is subject to the Proclamation — without giving him the opportunity to consider whether to voluntarily self-deport or challenge the basis for the order — is unlawful.” That’s it.
Boasberg has ordered the administration to explain whether his orders have been violated. In response, the government has done everything but cooperate: It has invoked the state-secrets privilege, essentially telling the judge that he’s entitled to no additional information about the flights he ordered returned; has accused him of misconduct and wants him removed from the case; and has argued that a federal court has no power over how the president exercises his authority abroad. In the coming days, the Supreme Court will have a say on how Boasberg has been ruling and conducting himself in these proceedings so far. Implicit in the Court’s judgment, because the issue is not directly before it, is how the weakest and least dangerous branch deals with the branch that wields executive power, controls the military, and has all the guns and the enforcement authority — and is headed by a president who appears ready to defy it.
