Judge: 'Probable Cause' to Hold Administration in Contempt

A federal judge who has vowed to "get to the bottom" of why planes carrying deportees to El Salvador failed to turn around despite his order says there is probable cause to hold the Trump administration in contempt. "The Government's actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt," US District Judge James Boasberg said in an order Wednesday, per NBC News.

• "The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions," Boasberg wrote. "None of their responses has been satisfactory."

• Boasberg said the administration could try to "purge their contempt" by filing "a declaration explaining the steps they have taken and will take to do so," by April 23, ABC News reports. The "most obvious" way to avoid a potential contempt finding, he said, would be for the administration to "assert custody" of the people deported in violation of his order so they "might avail themselves of their right to challenge their removability through a habeas proceeding." He said that would not require the administration to bring them back to the US.
• Boasberg's order was later vacated by the Supreme Court, but he said the administration was required to obey it while it was in effect. "The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders— especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it," he wrote. "To permit such officials to freely 'annul the judgments of the courts of the United States' would not just 'destroy the rights acquired under those judgments'; it would make 'a solemn mockery' of 'the constitution itself."

(More deportation stories.)