On April 7, 2025, the Supreme Court of the United States vacated a ruling by Chief Judge James "Jeb" Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He had ordered due-process protections for deportees under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The highest court in the country looked at his work and said no.
That was not the first time. It was not the last.
Boasberg, 62, was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama in 2011. In the years since — and particularly since President Trump took office — he has built a record that has been described as a "boomerang": he rules against the Trump administration, higher courts reverse him, and he does it again.
The timeline is worth walking through. In March 2025, Boasberg temporarily blocked deportations under the Alien Enemies Act — a statute signed by John Adams — targeting members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The administration appealed. The Supreme Court vacated his due-process order the following month. That should have been the end of it.
It wasn't. Boasberg then directed the administration to facilitate the return of more than 130 deportees who had already been removed. That order is currently under appellate review, which is a polite way of saying the D.C. Circuit is once again looking at his homework.
Then came the contempt proceedings. Boasberg launched a contempt inquiry against administration officials over the deportation matter. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit shut it down in April 2026, calling it a "judicial intrusion into the autonomy of a coequal department." Not a slap on the wrist. A constitutional rebuke.
The legal establishment will frame Boasberg as an independent jurist standing up to executive power. That framing requires you to ignore the part where every court that reviews his decisions keeps reaching the same conclusion: he went too far. Independence is ruling without regard to political pressure. What Boasberg is doing is ruling against the same administration repeatedly, getting reversed repeatedly, and then finding a new procedural vehicle to do it again.
One reversal is a disagreement. Two is a pattern. A Supreme Court vacatur, a circuit court shutdown of contempt proceedings, and an order to return 130-plus deportees still under review is something else entirely.
At some point, the bench stops being a courtroom and starts being a barricade. The appeals courts keep moving it out of the way.
