A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to end his efforts to pursue contempt proceedings against Trump administration officials for allegedly violating his orders in an immigration case.
The decision comes almost exactly a year after Boasberg said in a ruling that “probable cause exists to find the government in criminal contempt” for defying his order to temporarily halt deportations under a wartime authority invoked by President Trump.
In Tuesday’s opinion, judges Neomi Rao and Justin Walker, wrote that the district court’s plan amounted to “a clear abuse” of power, arguing the inquiry improperly targeted executive branch deliberations.
“The district court proposes to probe high-level Executive Branch deliberations about matters of national security and diplomacy. These proceedings are a clear abuse of discretion,” Neomi Rao and Justin Walker said in the unsigned opinion. They also stated, “The district court has launched an intrusive criminal contempt investigation into whether the government acted willfully when it transferred suspected Tren de Aragua members to Salvadoran custody. But the end of this investigation is a legal dead end.”
