A federal appeals court panel ruled against the Trump administration, declining to block a trial judge’s decision that temporarily halted certain deportations under an 18th century wartime law.
Federal officials filed an emergency appellate motion after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued temporary restraining orders on March 15. President Donald Trump had invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to summarily remove alleged Venezuelan gang members and fly them to El Salvador.
“This Court should halt this unprecedented intrusion upon the Executive’s authority to remove dangerous aliens who pose grave threats to the American people,” the Justice Department wrote to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ahead of a hearing Monday.
The D.C. Circuit panel split 2-1 on Wednesday against the administration, with each judge explaining themselves separately. Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson and Patricia Millet, appointed by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama respectively, published concurring statements, while Trump appointee Justin Walker wrote a dissent saying the administration was entitled to relief pending appeal, reasoning in part that “sensitive matters of foreign affairs and national security are at stake.”
Henderson wrote that the government wasn’t entitled to relief at this early stage and that Boasberg entered the restraining orders “for a quintessentially valid purpose: to protect its remedial authority long enough to consider the parties’ arguments.” Millet added that the trial judge “has been handling this matter with great expedition and circumspection, and its orders do nothing more than freeze the status quo until weighty and unprecedented legal issues can be addressed through a soon-forthcoming preliminary injunction proceeding.”
Boasberg didn’t order deportations halted across the board; rather, he temporarily constrained Trump’s authority to summarily deport people under the rarely used act. It was invoked three times before in U.S. history, all during declared wars. The government can still deport people under other legal authorities.
Opposing the government’s attempt to upend Boasberg’s orders, plaintiff lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union wrote ahead of the hearing that Trump’s “invocation of the Act against a gang cannot be squared with the explicit terms of the statute requiring a declared war or invasion by foreign government.” They called the implications of Trump’s argument “staggering,” writing that “if the President can designate any group as enemy aliens under the Act, and that designation is unreviewable, then there is no limit on who can be sent to a Salvadoran prison, or any limit on how long they will remain there.” Boasberg is separately examining whether officials deliberately flouted his orders. Trump called for the judge’s impeachment, after which Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare statement generally condemning such calls, which the president and his allies, including Elon Musk, have made in response to court rulings against the administration. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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