A federal judge who temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's use of wartime law could be at the heart of a bigger battle after Trump's border emperor vowed to continue sending immigrants back to Latin America on Monday to take control of the people of Venezuela.
US District Judge James Boasberg on Saturday granted an emergency restraining order blocking the Trump administration from calling out the 1798 law, allowing immediate deportation of Venezuelan citizens, including suspects of violent gangster Tren de Aragua. Boasberg sided with the plaintiffs, democracy and the ACLU, deciding that deportation was likely to cause impending “irreparable” harm.
“If you consider the urgent situation, [the court] Boasberg prevented Trump from calling for deportation under alien enemies for two weeks, Boasberg said on order.
His decision immediately attracted criticism from Trump's border emperor Tom Homan, who declared in an interview with Fox & Friends that “we won't stop.”
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On March 13, 2023, James Boasberg, Supreme Court Justice of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. (Valerie Press/Bloomberg via Getty)
“I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks. We're here,” Homan said, adding, “Another battle. Another battle every day.”
This wasn't the first time Boasberg had found himself at the intersection of Trump supporters. He previously oversaw the FISA court that approved oversight of certain members of Trump's 2016 campaign.
Boasberg, the Supreme Court justice of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama almost 15 years ago.
In 2014, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts appointed him to serve a seven-year term in the US Foreign Intelligence Election Court or FISA Court.
The judge undergoes extensive background checks prior to confirmation, and is responsible for reviewing surveillance requests and approval of wiretapping warrants sought by federal prosecutors, law enforcement and intelligence agency. Most of their work remains classified.
Boasberg served as a judge for the FISA Court from 2020 to 2021.
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A graduate of Yale, Oxford University and Yale Law, Boasberg was written in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit before joining the Department of Justice as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C.
After returning to the federal bench full-time, Boasberg oversaw the verdict of former FBI attorney Kevin Kleinsmith.
Boasberg refused to sentence Clinesmith to prison, and instead ordered a notable decision of 12 months of probation and 400 hours of community service, given his own background in FISA courts.
He said in his ruling that he believes Klein Smith's role at the heart of the longtime media “Hurricane” provided adequate punishment.
“No one who sees Mr. Klein Smith suffering is someone who acts that easily,” Boasberg said.
This is why he has filed dozens of lawsuits trying to counteract Trump's early actions when the president fails.
President Donald Trump and the courtroom gavel. (Getty Images)
“Compare all these factors together – in terms of both the damages he caused and what he suffered and what he suffered and what he himself was positive about his own life – I would say that the trial sentence is appropriate here and therefore would impose it,” he continued.
Until recently, Boasberg has largely avoided making headlines, including public broadsides that may have been in conflict with the Trump administration. It changed rapidly when he gave the restraint order this weekend.
The decision was immediately appealed by lawyers for the Trump administration.
Boasberg's order said the plane carrying immigrants, which was removed by the law in question, returned to the United States “quickly” but the decision appears to have been too late to stop the early waves of immigration from deporting them to El Salvador.
White House press chief Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that the plane carrying hundreds of individuals, including more than 130 people whose more than 130 people were removed under the alien enemy law, had already “departed from airspace” by the time the order was taken over.
“The order without legitimate basis was issued after the terrorists [Tren de Aragua] The aliens had already been taken away from US territory,” Levitt said.
If so, it is unclear what a judge could do to reverse his actions.
President Donald Trump in the White House oval office on February 4th, 2025. (Getty Images)
This standoff is the latest in a wave of legal challenges that Trump issued in his second White House term, attempting to block or delay a wave of cleaning enforcement actions or orders that Trump came to define several months before his first few months.
The courts have struggled to spurt government officials from federal agencies, halting billions of dollars in US foreign aid and slowing the pace of dizziness in executive orders that ban birthright citizenship and more.
At the time of this writing, Trump has signed at least 200 executive orders and lawsuits. Most of them are filled with multiple court issues and litigation.
As the court attempts to clarify the intent of the judgment, the alleged harm caused by the plaintiff, most are at the earliest stages of legal scope, with later harmful harm to identify whether the court should or should appropriately intervene.
The White House argues that lower court judges like Boasberg should not have the power to prevent the president from doing what he claims is a legal agenda, but the judge in question opposed that all the president's actions were following the law.
“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movement of aircraft carriers full of foreign alien terrorists physically expelled from US soil,” Leavitt told Fox News.
The problem is that Trump used the 228-year-old alien enemy law to quickly send Venezuelan citizens, presumably members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
The plaintiffs argued that Congress first passed the law centuries ago, and passed the law to give the president more power to deport non-citizens during the war. Since its creation it has been used only three times. It was during the war of World War I and most recently during World War II.
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In their submission, they argued that it was inappropriate for Trump to use the law now as a way to deport Venezuelan immigrants.
Boasberg noted on Saturday that the two-week freeze would give the court more time to consider the merits of the lawsuit at hand.
