A Federal Judge Now Questions Legality of Deportations Under Trump

Summary

Judge Boasberg ordered a top DOJ lawyer to testify about decisions behind deporting 100+ alleged gang members under the Alien Enemies Act.
Officials' declarations were deemed insufficient; judge seeks testimony to determine whether government willfully violated his March court directives.
Whistleblower claims senior DOJ officials urged ignoring court orders; controversy spotlights due process and unprecedented wartime law use in peacetime.

A federal judge has taken a significant step in a months-long investigation into whether Trump administration officials deliberately ignored court orders during a high-profile deportation operation earlier this year.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled that a top Department of Justice attorney must appear in court to testify about the decision-making process behind the deportations of more than 100 alleged gang members under a rarely used wartime law.

The order comes amid frustration from the judge over what he described as insufficient explanations from government officials about why the deportations proceeded despite his directives.

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What Prompted the Latest Ruling?

75 percent of ICE detainees had no criminal record, new leaked details find.

Back in March 2025, the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act—a law dating to 1798 that allows for the removal of noncitizens with minimal due process during times of war or invasion.

Officials argued that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua qualified as a “hybrid criminal state” invading the United States, justifying the swift deportation of two planeloads of men to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT mega-prison.

More than 250 suspected gang members arrived in El Salvador, including 238 alleged Tren de Aragua members and 23 from MS-13.

Judge Boasberg, responding to a lawsuit challenging the move, issued a temporary restraining order and verbally instructed government lawyers to turn the planes around if they were still in the air.

But the flights landed anyway, leading Boasberg to initiate contempt proceedings, suspecting the administration may have willfully defied his instructions.

The case has dragged on, with appeals and procedural hurdles, but recent sworn declarations from high-ranking officials—like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—provided what the judge called limited details.

Noem stated she relied on legal advice from DOJ leadership, including Joseph Mazarra, DHS’s acting general counsel, before allowing the transfers to continue.

Mazarra, in his own declaration, insisted: “DHS had removed these terrorists from the U.S. before this Court issued any order (or oral statement regarding their removal).”

Boasberg found these explanations lacking.

In his Monday order, he wrote: “The Court thus believes that it is necessary to hear witness testimony to better understand the bases of the decision to transfer the deportees out of United States custody in the context of the hearing on March 15, 2025.

The events surrounding this decision should shed light on this question.”

He added that Noem’s declaration “does not provide enough information for the Court to determine whether her decision was a willful violation of the Court’s Order,” making any referral for criminal contempt “premature” at this stage.

Who Has Been Called to Testify?

The judge ordered Drew Ensign, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Immigration Litigation in the Civil Division, to testify on December 16.

Ensign was directly involved in the frantic court proceedings back in March and relayed the judge’s instructions to higher-ups.

Additionally, testimony is scheduled for December 15 from Erez Reuveni, a former DOJ attorney who has alleged the administration worked to evade court orders.

Reuveni, fired earlier this year, filed a whistleblower complaint claiming senior officials discussed ignoring judicial directives.

Erez Reuveni, who spent 15 years at the DOJ and was no stranger to defending tough immigration policies under the first Trump term, detailed these claims in a recent 60 Minutes interview, painting a picture of chaos and ethical lapses at the highest levels.

The controversy centers on Emil Bove, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney who was tapped as the DOJ’s third-highest official earlier this year.

According to Reuveni, Bove called a meeting on March 14 where he laid out plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act—a dusty 200-year-old law allowing the president to expel citizens from countries the U.S. is at war with.

The twist? No war had been declared with Venezuela, but the administration aimed to ship about 250 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT mega-prison anyway.

Bove stressed that those planes “need to take off, no matter what,” Reuveni recalled.

Then, after a pause, Bove reportedly added: “And if some court should issue an order preventing that, we may have to consider telling that court, ‘F— you.’”

Reuveni, who was acting deputy director of the DOJ’s immigration section at the time, said the comment hit him like “a bomb had gone off.”

He described it as the number three official “using expletives to tell career attorneys that we may just have to consider disregarding federal court orders.”

“It is the highest, most egregious violation of a lawyer’s code of ethics to mislead a court with intent,” Reuveni said.

The fallout didn’t stop there. One deportee, Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a Maryland father—was sent by mistake.

Instead of fixing it, Reuveni’s superiors pushed him to argue in court that Garcia was an MS-13 gang member and terrorist, which Reuveni knew was false.

“I responded up the chain of command, no way. That is not correct,” he said. “That is not factually correct. It is not legally correct. That is a lie. And I cannot sign my name to that brief.”

The DOJ has pushed back, maintaining that no deliberate violation occurred and accusing the judge of overstepping his authority in pursuing the contempt probe.

A Justice Department representative did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the latest order.

Data: 75% of ICE Detainees Have Had No Criminal Background

The Trump administration has been under fire for missing their mark under Kristi Noem and Donald Trump’s leadership to deport the worst of the worst criminals.

75% of ICE detainees have had no criminal background, contradicting the United States’ plan to deport these ‘vicious illegal aliens’ our government so bad wants us to believe in.

It’s hard not to feel a twinge of déjà vu when you scroll through the headlines these days.

Back in the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump thundered about rounding up “millions and millions of criminal aliens,” painting a picture of a nation under siege by dangerous fugitives slipping through the cracks.

Fast-forward to late 2025, and that promise feels like it’s echoing in an empty warehouse—except the warehouse is packed with people who, by most measures, aren’t the threats he had in mind.

Newly leaked figures from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) paint a stark picture: The massive deportation push under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is sweeping up far more garden-variety immigrants than the “worst of the worst” her boss vowed to target.

It’s the kind of disconnect that makes you wonder if the folks in charge are reading the same script as the rest of us.

The numbers, first obtained by the libertarian Cato Institute and corroborated by multiple independent datasets, show that since the start of the fiscal year on October 1, a whopping 73 percent of people booked into ICE custody had no criminal conviction at all.

Nearly half of those detained—48 percent—didn’t even have pending charges on their records.

And get this: Only 5 percent involved individuals with a violent criminal conviction.