Judge James Boasberg indicated during a hearing on Thursday that he was leaning toward beginning contempt proceedings against Trump administration officials after they failed to follow his verbal order last month to return alleged Venezuelan gang members who were deported under the Alien Enemies Act.
Boasberg said he believed that the Trump administration “acted in bad faith” by surreptitiously rushing to deport two planes of the alleged Tren de Aragua members to a Salvadoran prison on March 15, even as a legal challenge to the deportations was already underway.
“If you really believed everything you did that day was legal and would survive a court challenge, you wouldn’t have operated the way you did,” Boasberg said.
The judge also observed that returning the migrants was doable because the United States brought back a handful of female deportees rejected by…
