Reaction & Commentary
The federal judge who temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s use of a wartime law to deport Venezuelan nationals could be at the center of a larger battle after Trump’s border czar vowed Monday to continue sending migrants back to Latin America.
U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg made headlines Saturday for granting an emergency restraining order blocking the Trump administration from invoking a 1798 law to immediately deport Venezuelan nationals, including alleged members of the violent gang Tren de Aragua, for 14 days. Boasberg sided with the plaintiffs, Democracy Forward and the ACLU, in ruling that the deportations would likely pose imminent and “irreparable” harm.
“Given the exigent circumstances that [the court] has been made aware of this morning, it has determined that an immediate Order is warranted to maintain the status quo until a hearing can be set,” Boasberg said in his order, which blocked Trump from invoking any deportations under the Alien Enemies Act for two weeks.
His decision drew immediate criticism from Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, who declared in an interview on “Fox & Friends” that, “We are not stopping.”
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James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court, in Washington, D.C., on March 13, 2023. (Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty)
“I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the Left thinks. We’re coming,” Homan, said, adding, “Another fight. Another fight every day.”
This was not the first time Boasberg found himself in the crosshairs of Trump’s supporters – he previously oversaw the FISA court that authorized surveillance of certain members of Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., was appointed to the bench nearly 15 years ago by President Barack Obama.
In 2014, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts appointed him to serve a seven-year term on the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA Court – a court comprised of 11 federal judges hand-selected by the chief justice.
The judges undergo extensive background checks prior to their confirmation, and are tasked with approving surveillance requests and wiretap warrants sought by federal prosecutors, law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Most of their work remains classified.
Boasberg served as the presiding judge of the FISA Court from 2020 to 2021.
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Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele posted footage showing hundreds of alleged criminal migrants arriving in Central America. (@nayibbukele via X)
A graduate of Yale, Oxford University and Yale Law, Boasberg clerked for the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals before later joining the Justice Department as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C.
After returning full-time to the federal bench, Boasberg oversaw the sentencing of former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to doctoring a 2017 email asking to extend surveillance permissions for its wiretap of former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.
Boasberg declined to sentence Clinesmith to prison time and instead ordered him to just 12 months of probation and 400 hours of community service – a notable decision, given his own background on the FISA court.
He said in his sentencing decision that he believed Clinesmith’s role at the center of a years-long media “hurricane” had provided sufficient punishment.
“Anybody who has watched what Mr. Clinesmith has suffered is not someone who will readily act in that fashion,” Boasberg said.
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President Donald Trump and a courtroom gavel. (Getty Images)
“Weighing all of these factors together – both in terms of the damages he caused and what he has suffered and the positives in his own life – I believe a probationary sentence is appropriate here and will therefore impose it,” he continued.
Until recently, Boasberg has largely avoided making headlines, including any public broadsides that may have put him at odds with the Trump administration. That changed quickly when he granted the restraining order this weekend.
The decision was immediately appealed by lawyers for the Trump administration.
Although Boasberg’s order said any plane carrying migrants removed by the law in question be “immediately” returned to the U.S., the decision apparently came too late to stop an early wave of migrants being deported to El Salvador.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that a plane carrying hundreds of individuals – including more than 130 persons removed under the Alien Enemies Act – had already “left U.S. airspace” by the time the order was handed down.
“The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist [Tren de Aragua] aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory,” Leavitt said.
It is unclear what, if any, steps the judge could take to reverse that action.
President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on Feb. 4, 2025. (Getty Images)
The standoff is the latest in a wave of legal challenges seeking to block or slow the wave of sweeping executive actions or orders Trump has issued in his second White House term, a fight that has come to define Trump’s first few months back in office.
Courts have struggled to slow the dizzying pace of executive orders, which have called for the gutting of government personnel from federal agencies, halted billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid, and attempted to ban birthright citizenship, among other things.
As of this writing, Trump has signed at least 200 executive orders and actions – most of which have been met with multiple court challenges and lawsuits.
Most are in the earliest stages of legal limbo, as courts seek to clarify the intent of the ruling, the alleged harm caused to plaintiffs, and later, to discern whether it is necessary or appropriate for the courts to intervene.
The White House asserts that lower court judges like Boasberg should not have the power to prevent the president from executing what it argues is a lawful agenda – though the judges in question have disagreed that the president’s actions all follow the law.
“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil,” Leavitt told Fox News.
At issue is Trump’s use of the 228-year-old Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport Venezuelan nationals presumed to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
Plaintiffs have argued that Congress originally passed the law centuries ago to give the president more power during times of war to deport noncitizens. Since its creation, it has been used just three times: during the War of 1812, World War I, and most recently, during World War II.
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They argued in their filing that it would be inappropriate for Trump to use the law now as a means of deporting Venezuelan migrants, as the country “is not invading the United States” and has not launched a “predatory incursion” into U.S. territory.
Boasberg agreed, noting Saturday that the two-week freeze will give the court more time to consider the merits of the case at hand.
