An Obama-appointed federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to pay for airfare and provide travel documents to bring back hundreds of 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 order Thursday, declaring the administration must "remedy the wrong that it perpetrated" by removing them from the country.
The migrants would be taken into custody upon arrival. But the core demand is extraordinary: a single district court judge compelling the executive branch to reverse a completed deportation, fund the return trip, and hand suspected gang members the paperwork to board flights back to American soil.
In March 2025, President Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to allow expedited removal of Venezuelan migrants suspected of belonging to TdA. This transnational criminal organization has embedded itself in American cities. Boasberg responded almost immediately with an order blocking those deportations.
The Supreme Court weighed in weeks later. In a 5-4 decision in April 2025, the justices lifted Boasberg's block, finding that the migrants had improperly challenged their deportations in Washington, D.C., when they should have done so in Texas. The highest court in the land said Boasberg's court wasn't even the right venue.
And yet according to Breitbart, here he is again—issuing orders from that same court, now demanding something far more dramatic than blocking a deportation. He wants one undone.
Boasberg framed his order as a matter of constitutional process. In his telling, the administration removed the migrants without affording them adequate opportunity to challenge their deportations:
"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 further stated that the situation would never have arisen had the government afforded the plaintiffs their constitutional rights before initially deporting them.
Set aside the legal theory for a moment and consider the practical reality. These are suspected members of a violent Venezuelan gang. They were in the United States illegally. The president invoked a law that has been on the books since the John Adams administration to remove them. The Supreme Court sided with the administration on the jurisdictional question. And a district judge is now ordering the government to buy plane tickets to bring them back.
The Trump administration has agreed to return the men to immigration custody if they arrive at a U.S. airport or border station on their own. But Department of Justice attorneys are pushing back against providing the men with letters that would help them board flights to the United States—a critical distinction.
There is a canyon between "we won't block your return" and "we will actively facilitate it." Boasberg's order bridges that canyon by force, demanding the administration not merely permit reentry but engineer it—airfare, documents, the works.
This is where judicial overreach stops being an abstraction and becomes an operational mandate. A judge is ordering the executive branch to spend taxpayer money transporting suspected gang members back into the country, the executive branch just removed them from.
The sequence is now familiar. The administration enforces immigration law. A district court judge—often in D.C., often appointed by a Democratic president—intervenes. The case climbs toward the Supreme Court. The administration wins on the merits or on jurisdiction. And the same judge finds a new angle to reassert control.
Boasberg was already overruled once on this very matter. The Supreme Court told him the case didn't belong in his courtroom. His response was not deference but escalation—an order more sweeping than the one the Court struck down.
The left has spent years insisting that "no one is above the law." Apparently, that principle has a carve-out for federal judges who keep issuing orders after the Supreme Court pulls the rug out from under them.
Hundreds of illegal immigrants suspected of gang ties were removed from the United States under a lawful act of Congress signed in 1798. The Supreme Court cleared the way for those removals. No,w a lower court judge wants to put them on planes headed back.
If this order stands, the precedent it sets dwarfs this single case. Any future deportation could be reversed by a sympathetic judge claiming insufficient process—after the fact, from a courtroom the Supreme Court already said lacked jurisdiction. Enforcement becomes provisional. Removal becomes temporary. And the executive branch's core immigration authority exists only at the pleasure of whichever district judge gets the filing first.
The administration removed suspected gang members from American communities. A judge wants them returned. Somewhere in that gap lives the question of who actually governs immigration policy in the United States—and right now, one man in a black robe is making a compelling case that it's him.
