JUST IN: Judge Boasberg Smacked Down In Huge Win For Trump

Federal Judge James Boasberg has been overruled by his colleagues, delivering a huge win to President Donald Trump and his mission of mass deportations.

From the start of his second term, Trump and his top immigration advisors justified their speedy deportations of illegal immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, an arcane law that has only been applied during times of war.

On March 15, Boasberg, a Washington, D.C. District Court judge, halted some of the administration’s first flights to El Salvador, concluding suspected illegal immigrants had been denied due process. He later found the administration in criminal contempt for disobeying his order.

But a divided federal appeals court overturned that ruling by a 2-1 vote on Friday when it paused Boasberg’s contempt finding as it seeks more time to review the case. An unsigned opinion released by Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both Trump appointees, granted a request by the U.S. Justice Department to toss out Boasberg’s ruling.

Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, dissented.

The original disagreement between Boasberg and Trump officials stems from the ambiguity of his initial oral order to turn planes around that were bound for El Salvador. Authorities replied that the planes carrying dozens of migrants were out of U.S. airspace by the time they received word of the decision.

In response, Boasberg accused the government of demonstrating “willful disregard” of his order.

“The court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory,” the judge wrote in his initial contempt decision.

In a concurring opinion, Katsas wrote that the case “involves an extraordinary, ongoing confrontation between the Executive and Judicial Branches.” However, Boasberg was wrong to decide at this time “whether the government’s aggressive implementation of the presidential proclamation warrants praise or criticism as a policy matter.”

Still, Katsas wrote that the Trump administration deserved to avoid contempt because “the government is plainly correct about the merits of the criminal contempt, and our saying so now would prevent long disputes between the Executive and the Judiciary over difficult, contentious issues regarding the courts’ power to control foreign policy or prosecutions, or to impose criminal sanctions for violating injunctions entered without jurisdiction.”

“In circumstances much less fraught than these, courts have reviewed interlocutory orders through mandamus to prevent extended inter-branch conflict,” Katsas said, CBS News reported.

He wrote that Boasberg’s contempt finding “raises troubling questions about judicial control over core executive functions like the conduct of foreign policy and the prosecution of criminal offenses.”