Reactions To The "Probable Cause Finding Re Contempt" in the Case Involving Removal Of Tren de Aragua Members to El Salvador

I'm still skeptical Judge Boasberg will play this out to the end -- but if he does I expect the Supreme Court to step in and put the pin back in the grenade.

Last week a unanimous Supreme Court gave the following instruction to a district court judge:

“The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”

In the matter of the deportation of members of Tren de Aragua (TdA) — a Venezuelan criminal gang — Judge James Boasberg in Washington D.C. decided on April 16 that there is probable cause to believe that members of the Trump Administration have committed criminal contempt by violating a Temporary Restraining Order issued by him in the evening on March 15, 2025. That Order was to prevent the deportation of any alleged TdA member who was being removed from the United States pursuant to an invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. Based on information that planes were in the air taking TdA members to El Salvador where they would be held pursuant to an agreement between the United States and that country, Judge Boasberg instructed the attorney for the government to communicate his order to whoever was responsible for the operation to have the planes turned around, or to have the persons on the plane returned back to the United States if the planes had already landed.

A dispute has now lasted for a month over the specifics of what Judge Boasberg did or did not direct the Administration to do on March 15 — both during the hearing and later in a short “Electronic Order” entered into the docket of the case. But in his response to the Administration’s argument that it technically complied with what he specifically directed it to do, Judge Boasberg seems to have not heeded at all the words of the Supreme Court a different judge in a different court last week in the sentence quoted above. His 46 page opinion outlining the facts and circumstances — as he sees them — related to the events of March 15 and there after really comes down to the following:

“You know what I meant.”