The Trump administration has objected to Judge James Boasberg‘s order temporarily blocking the deportation of alleged criminal migrants to a Salvadoran prison, while also contending that it did not defy Boasberg’s order, although the deportees in question are currently incarcerated in El Salvador.
The administration is also refusing to provide the judge with requested information about the deportation flights by invoking the state-secrets privilege and claiming the judge is not entitled to the secret flight information. (Boasberg wants the flight data in order to determine whether the order was violated.)
it’s worth pausing to consider how inured we are to presidential malignancy that nobody lingers on the question of whether trump cares about sending the wrong people to foreign detention camps.
the answer is so broadly understood that it now passes without comment.
— Lee Kovarsky (@kovarsky.bsky.social) March 25, 2025 at 9:24 AM
Boasberg’s role in determining whether the executive branch acted within the law when it deported more than 200 people it identifies as Venezuelan gang members is part of standard operating procedure in the American checks and balances system — the judiciary checking the legality of actions taken by the executive branch.
Seeking a more unilateral grip on power, however, the Trump administration, along with Elon Musk and other MAGA adherents, have challenged Boasberg’s authority on the issue while also questioning his character and motivations, with many far-right actors calling for the judge to be impeached –and ascribing an extralegal liberal bias to a judge first appointed by Republican George W. Bush.
These calls for impeachment were unusual and divisive enough that they drew a response from Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, who wrote: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision…The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
[NOTE: In 2020, Republican Chief Justice John Roberts appointed Boasberg to the United States Alien Terrorist Removal Court, where he was named chief judge.]
CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS on Trump world’s calls to impeach James Boasberg, who ruled against the president on the Alien Enemy Act:
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial…
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) March 18, 2025
MAGA adherents contend that Boasberg is a “judicial activist,” which, they argue, renders Roberts’s traditional understanding of the legal order quaint and obsolete.
Boasberg’s temporary block has made the GOP so frustrated that in response House Speaker Mike Johnson threatened to dismantle the judiciary via congressional purse strings, rather than abide its legal findings.
Oh so Mike Johnson does believe Congress has the power of the purse?
— Robert Maguire (@robertmaguire.bsky.social) March 25, 2025 at 11:22 AM
The deportation flight info remains obscured from Boasberg, who has reprimanded the administration for its failure to comply with his request.
In the wake of the Signalgate revelations, in which presumably far more sensitive flight information — about U.S. military attacks in Yemen — was shared with a journalist on a commercial chat app, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) noted the irony and called out what he characterized as the dubiousness of the “state-secrets” justification by comparing the two intel situations.
“So what time the plane to Venezuela took off is state secret,” an incredulous Whitehouse says, “but what time bombs would land on Houthis isn’t? Figure that out.”
So what time the plane to Venezuela took off is state secret, but what time bombs would land on Houthis isn’t? Figure that out.https://t.co/ZnMwOnWm3I
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) March 26, 2025