Trump administration facing indictment for contempt after deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador

A federal appeals court will examine Tuesday whether a federal judge can proceed with a criminal contempt investigation into the Trump administration related to the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador in March 2025.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hold an en banc hearing with all 11 of its judges — an unusual step — to rule on whether the U.S. government should be held accountable for disobeying a judge’s orders that barred sending the foreigners to the Central American country.The case goes back to March 15, 2025, when the campaign to carry out the largest deportation in U.S. history was getting under way. The Department of Homeland Security, then led by Kristi Noem, ordered the deportation to El Salvador of 238 migrants, mostly Venezuelans, though some Salvadorans were also included. The deportations were carried out without allowing those expelled access to due process.The government, without evidence, accused the migrants of belonging to criminal gangs, mainly Tren de Aragua, which Trump had placed on a list of terrorist organizations. To justify transferring them without a court order, the administration invoked the so‑called Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has only been used in wartime. The last time it was active was during World War II to detain citizens of Japanese ancestry.Locked up in the CECOTU.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered flights halted while the planes were still in the air. DHS did not comply, and the two planes landed in El Salvador. Photos of the deportees standing in line with shaved heads and handcuffed circulated worldwide and drew criticism from human rights organizations. The detainees were taken to the notorious high‑security prison CECOT, created by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, which is known for the deplorable conditions in which prisoners are held.The Supreme Court, with a conservative majority sympathetic to Trump, overturned Judge Boasberg’s order weeks later, ruling that the migrants’ legal challenges should be brought in the federal districts where they had been detained. Nevertheless, Boasberg continued his contempt inquiry, arguing that the subsequent ruling did not excuse the government from possibly violating his order. In April 2025 the judge found probable cause to believe the government had deliberately violated his order and said he was considering opening a criminal contempt investigation.The government argued that Boasberg exceeded his authority by pursuing the contempt inquiry. In April 2026, an appeals court, in a divided decision, ordered Boasberg to end the investigation.The full D.C. Circuit agreed to rehear the panel’s decision and will determine whether Boasberg can continue his criminal contempt probe. If the court allows the judge to proceed, former DHS secretary Noem could potentially be charged for being responsible for allowing the flights to continue despite the court order for the planes to return. Noem oversaw Trump’s deportation campaign with a heavy hand and endorsed the campaign’s most aggressive detention tactics. After her handling of several crises following the killings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January of this year, Trump removed her and replaced her with the current secretary, Markwayne Mullin.In August, 204 former judges sent a letter urging the appeals court to allow the contempt investigation to continue, calling the district court’s inquiry “entirely proper and appropriate.”Last Friday another appeals court weighed in on a related case. The hearing focused on whether the men sent to the CECOT are finally entitled to hearings — either remotely or back in the United States — to prove they are not members of Tren de Aragua and that their expulsion from the U.S., conducted without a hearing under the Alien Enemies Act, was unlawful. The three judges on the D.C. Circuit panel were split and did not say when they will issue a ruling.A key question for the panel is whether U.S. courts have jurisdiction over the migrants’ claims even after the men arrived in El Salvador. The Venezuelans held at the CECOT were deported months later to Venezuela.Lee Gelernt, the lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) representing the deported migrants, said the Trump administration has acknowledged violating the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights but is not trying to fix the problem.An investigation by The New York Times revealed that of the 238 people the Trump administration deported to the CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act, only 32 had serious criminal records and even fewer had any connection to Tren de Aragua. Other investigations agreed that most were not criminals. Administration sources later confirmed that some of the evidence used to implicate the migrants consisted of tattoos they bore — designs that are common and not necessarily linked to criminal gangs.Among the passengers on the flights to El Salvador was Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran whose case became notable for being the first in which the Trump administration admitted it had made a mistake. Abrego García was returned to the U.S. months later, but he has continued a separate legal fight against the Trump administration, which has insisted, without providing evidence, on linking him to criminal gangs.Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition