An Obama-appointed federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to pay for flights and provide travel documents to bring back Venezuelan migrants — suspected members of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang — who were deported to El Salvador.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Chief Judge James Boasberg issued the decision on Thursday, ruling that the administration must facilitate the return of hundreds of Venezuelan nationals removed under the Alien Enemies Act. The men would be taken into custody upon arrival.
Read that again: a federal judge is ordering the executive branch to retrieve suspected gang members from a foreign country, put them on planes, and bring them back to American soil — at taxpayer expense.
Boasberg framed his order as a matter of constitutional obligation, arguing the deportees were removed without adequate legal process, Breitbart reported. In his decision, he wrote:
"It is up to the Government to remedy the wrong that it perpetrated here and to provide a means for doing so."
He went further, painting a scenario in which executive inaction would create an unchecked removal power:
"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."
Boasberg also stated that the situation "would never have arisen had the Government simply afforded Plaintiffs their constitutional rights before initially deporting them."
The framing is telling. In Boasberg's construction, the federal government committed a "wrong" — not by failing to protect American communities from suspected gang members, but by removing those suspects too efficiently.
This order is the latest chapter in a monthslong battle between the judiciary and the executive over the use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. President Trump invoked the law in March 2025 to enable the expedited removal of Venezuelan migrants suspected of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang. This transnational criminal organization has terrorized communities across multiple American cities.
Boasberg initially blocked the deportations entirely. The Supreme Court stepped in with a 5-4 decision in April 2025, lifting the block. The majority found that the migrants had improperly challenged their deportations in Washington, D.C., when the proper venue was Texas.
That's a significant detail. The nation's highest court told Boasberg, in effect, that this case didn't belong in his courtroom. Yet here he is — still issuing orders, still directing immigration enforcement policy from the D.C. bench.
The Trump administration hasn't rolled over. The administration has agreed to return the men to immigration custody if they arrive at a U.S. airport or border station — but DOJ attorneys are resisting the order to provide letters that would help the men board flights to the United States.
The distinction matters. There is a wide gap between accepting someone who shows up at a port of entry and actively furnishing foreign nationals with government-issued travel documents designed to get them back into the country. One is a legal obligation. The other is a concierge service for suspected gang members.
Consider what Boasberg's order requires in practice. The Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan nationals suspected of gang ties to El Salvador — a country whose president has become internationally known for his aggressive crackdown on gang violence. Now a single federal judge wants the U.S. government to reverse that process, booking flights and issuing paperwork so these men can return to the country they allegedly terrorized.
No names of the deported individuals have been made public. No specific constitutional rights Boasberg believes were violated have been detailed beyond the general claim. The plaintiffs are anonymous. The alleged violations are abstract. But the order is concrete: bring them back.
The deeper question isn't whether Boasberg's reading of due process is technically defensible in some narrow procedural sense. It's whether the American judiciary has functionally granted itself veto power over immigration enforcement — not just the authority to review individual cases, but the ability to reverse completed deportations and compel the executive branch to undo its own national security decisions.
The Supreme Court already signaled skepticism of Boasberg's involvement when it ruled 5-4 that venue was improper. That didn't slow him down. The deportations happened. The men are in El Salvador. And Boasberg is still issuing orders as though none of that matters.
This is the pattern. A single district court judge, appointed by a president two administrations ago, stationed in Washington, D.C., exercises what amounts to a nationwide injunction over immigration policy. The Supreme Court narrows the overreach on procedural grounds. The judge finds a new angle and keeps going.
The constitutional framework Boasberg invokes was designed to protect people living under American jurisdiction from arbitrary government action. It was not designed to create a round-trip ticket for suspected members of a Venezuelan prison gang. Yet that is precisely what his order demands.
Meanwhile, the communities these men allegedly preyed upon — American communities — don't get a hearing in Boasberg's courtroom. Their safety doesn't appear in his calculus. The "wrong" he wants remedied isn't the violence Tren de Aragua brought to American streets. It's the paperwork that wasn't filed before the government removed the people suspected of bringing it.
Process matters. But the process exists to serve justice, not to sabotage it. When procedural rights become a mechanism for returning suspected gang members to the country they victimized, something has gone badly wrong — and it isn't the deportation.
