By Jan Wolfe
April 14 (Reuters) - In a victory for Donald Trump, a U.S. appeals court on Tuesday blocked a judge from conducting an investigation into whether the Republican president's administration willfully violated a judicial order directing them to stop deportation flights of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a 2-1 ruling faulted U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in his standoff with administration officials
over the limits of presidential power.
The D.C. Circuit decided that Boasberg encroached on "the autonomy of the executive branch" by demanding sworn testimony from administration officials to determine whether they purposely defied his March 2025 court order to turn around aircraft that were removing the Venezuelans from the United States.
"The district court proposes to probe high-level Executive Branch deliberations about matters of national security and diplomacy," Circuit Judge Neomi Rao wrote, referring to Boasberg.
But Boasberg's inquiry, known as a contempt proceeding, was a "clear abuse of discretion," Rao wrote. Such criminal contempt proceedings can result in fines or other forms of censure.
Rao was joined by Circuit Judge Justin Walker in Tuesday's decision, with Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs in dissent. Rao and Walker are both Trump judicial appointees. Childs was appointed by Democratic former President Joe Biden.
The dispute arose as part of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration under the Alien Enemies Act, with the plaintiffs arguing that the administration acted unlawfully with the deportation flights.
This 1798 law, which has been invoked rarely in U.S. history, gives presidents broad powers to detain and deport citizens of nations that are at war with the United States or have launched an invasion of U.S. territory.
The same judicial panel in December temporarily halted Boasberg's contempt proceeding while considering the matter further.
Boasberg has ruled against Trump's administration in multiple cases. The president has called the judge a "Radical Left Lunatic" as well as a "troublemaker and agitator."
The Venezuelan men at the center of the litigation were released from a Salvadoran prison last summer and returned to Venezuela as part of a U.S.-brokered prisoner swap. The United States has accused the men of being gang members. Lawyers and family members have disputed that allegation.
Boasberg concluded that the administration appeared to have acted "in bad faith" when it hurriedly assembled three deportation flights at the same time that he was conducting emergency court proceedings to assess the legality of the effort.
The judge sought testimony from a high-ranking Justice Department lawyer, as well as a former department attorney who became a whistleblower.
In her dissent on Tuesday, Childs said Boasberg was "just trying to understand the events of a single weekend in March (2025), including the actions which may have led to the willful violation" of one of the judge's orders.
Childs said Tuesday's ruling stymied Boasberg "in a way that will affect not only these contempt proceedings but will also echo in future proceedings against all litigants."
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said in a statement that the U.S. legal system "cannot tolerate the executive branch deliberately violating any court order, much less one that resulted in the horrific abuse and torture of dozens of men at a notorious Salvadoran gulag."
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Will Dunham)
