An Obama-appointed federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to bring back hundreds of Venezuelan illegal immigrants who were deported to El Salvador, directing the government to pay for their airfare and provide travel documents to get them here.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Chief Judge James Boasberg issued the ruling Thursday, demanding the administration facilitate the return of Venezuelan migrants suspected of belonging to the notorious Tren de Aragua gang. Upon arrival, the migrants would be taken into immigration custody.
According to Breitbart, the Department of Justice is pushing back, with DOJ attorneys opposing the provision of letters that would help the men board flights to the United States. The Trump administration has agreed only to return the men to immigration custody if they independently make it to a U.S. airport or border station. The gap between what the judge demands and what the government will concede sets the stage for yet another collision between the judiciary and the executive branch over immigration enforcement.
This is not Judge Boasberg's first intervention in this saga. The timeline tells its own story.
In March 2025, President Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to enable the expedited removal of Venezuelan migrants suspected of membership in the Tren de Aragua gang. Boasberg responded with an order blocking those deportations. The Supreme Court then stepped in with a 5-4 decision in April 2025, lifting Boasberg's block and finding that the migrants had improperly challenged their deportations in Washington, D.C., when the proper venue was Texas.
The nation's highest court told Boasberg he got it wrong. Hundreds of suspected gang members were subsequently deported to El Salvador. Now Boasberg is back, ordering the government to reverse the very removals the Supreme Court allowed to proceed.
In his ruling, Boasberg placed the blame squarely on the administration:
"It is up to the Government to remedy the wrong that it perpetrated here and to provide a means for doing so. Were it otherwise, the Government could simply remove people from the United States without providing any process and then, once they were in a foreign country, deny them any right to return for a hearing or opportunity to present their case from abroad."
He also argued that the entire situation was avoidable:
"This situation would never have arisen had the Government simply afforded Plaintiffs their constitutional rights before initially deporting them."
What constitutional rights, exactly? The ruling leaves that question frustratingly vague. These are illegal immigrants suspected of gang membership who were removed under a wartime statute that has been on the books since the Adams administration. The suggestion that they were owed more process before removal is a legal assertion doing heavy lifting without much visible support structure beneath it.
Consider the logic Boasberg is asking the country to accept. The federal government identifies suspected members of a violent transnational gang operating on American soil. It uses a duly enacted federal statute to remove them. The Supreme Court, in a majority opinion, clears the path for those removals. The removals happen. And then a single district court judge orders the government to fly them back at taxpayer expense.
If this framework holds, no deportation is ever final. Any removal can be unwound by a sympathetic lower court judge months or even years after the fact, regardless of what higher courts have ruled in the interim. The executive branch's core enforcement power becomes provisional, always subject to judicial recall.
This is not a novel concern. The pattern has repeated itself across immigration law for years: enforcement action, judicial block, Supreme Court intervention, and then another lower court maneuver that effectively relitigates what was already decided. Each cycle erodes the credibility of the system and the public's confidence that laws on the books will ever be applied as written.
Boasberg's order directs the Trump administration to cover airfare and provide documents facilitating travel for the deportees. The practical implications deserve scrutiny:
The administration's position, agreeing to process the men only if they reach a U.S. airport or border station on their own, is a clear signal that it does not intend to become a travel agency for deported gang suspects. That distinction matters. There is a vast difference between acknowledging a court's authority and actively enabling what you believe is a dangerous misapplication of it.
The administration's next move will likely determine whether this ruling becomes a landmark or a footnote. An appeal seems all but certain. The Supreme Court has already weighed in on the underlying deportation question once, siding with the government 5-4. Whether the justices will tolerate a district court judge functionally reversing their ruling through a different procedural door is an open question, but not a difficult one to predict.
The broader fight, though, is not really about these particular deportees. It is about whether the elected branches of government retain the ability to remove illegal immigrants who pose a security threat, or whether that power exists only until a federal judge in Washington decides it doesn't.
Hundreds of suspected Tren de Aragua gang members were identified, processed, and removed from the United States under federal law. A judge wants them flown back. The American public can decide for itself whose judgment it trusts on that question.