A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to facilitate the return of Venezuelan illegal immigrants who were deported to El Salvador — migrants suspected of belonging to the notorious Tren de Aragua gang. Chief Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee, directed the administration to pay for their airfare and provide travel documents to bring them back to American soil.

Read that again. A single district court judge is commanding the executive branch to fly suspected gang members — people already removed from the country — back into the United States on the taxpayers' dime.

The Background

In March 2025, President Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act as part of a strategy to expedite the removal of Venezuelan migrants suspected of belonging to Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal gang that has embedded itself in American cities. Hundreds of those migrants were subsequently deported to El Salvador.

Boasberg initially tried to block those deportations entirely. According to Breitbart News, the Supreme Court overruled him. In a 5-4 decision in April 2025, the justices lifted Boasberg's order, finding that the migrants had improperly challenged their deportations in Washington, D.C., when the proper venue was Texas.

The Supreme Court told him he got the jurisdiction wrong. Boasberg's response, apparently, was to find a different angle.

A Judge Who Won't Take No for an Answer

Boasberg framed his order as a matter of constitutional due process. In his ruling, he argued:

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 went further, placing the blame squarely on the administration:

This situation would never have arisen had the Government simply afforded Plaintiffs their constitutional rights before initially deporting them.

And then the kicker:

It is up to the Government to remedy the wrong that it perpetrated here and to provide a means for doing so.

"The wrong that it perpetrated." That's a federal judge describing the deportation of suspected gang members as a wrong perpetrated by the United States government. Not the gang activity. Not the illegal entry. The deportation.

The Administration's Position

The Trump administration has agreed to return the men to immigration custody if they make it to a U.S. airport or border station on their own. That's a meaningful concession — it acknowledges a legal process while maintaining that the government shouldn't be in the business of booking flights for people it just deported.

Department of Justice attorneys have pushed back against giving the men letters that would help them board flights to the U.S. The distinction matters: there is a canyon between allowing someone to petition for re-entry and actively subsidizing their return trip.

Boasberg's order leaps across that canyon. He is not merely preserving a legal right — he is conscripting the executive branch into logistical service for illegal immigrants the government determined were a threat.

The Larger Pattern

This saga reveals something deeper than a single judge's overreach. It exposes a structural problem in the judiciary's interaction with immigration enforcement.

Consider the sequence:

• The president invokes a centuries-old law to remove suspected gang members.
• A district judge blocks the deportations.
• The Supreme Court overturns the block and says the judge erred in exercising jurisdiction.
• The same judge issues a new order demanding the government reverse the deportations entirely — and pay for it.

At no point in this cycle does enforcement actually stick. Every executive action generates a judicial counter-action. The administration removes a threat; a courtroom reinstates it. The highest court in the land corrects the lower court; the lower court finds a workaround. The process becomes the punishment — not for the illegal immigrants, but for the policy itself.

This is how enforcement dies. Not through legislation, not through democratic debate, but through procedural attrition in friendly courtrooms.

Due Process — for Whom?

Boasberg's constitutional reasoning deserves scrutiny. The due process argument has rhetorical power — nobody wants to be against due process. But the question isn't whether legal procedures matter. The question is whether a federal judge can unilaterally transform the deportation of suspected gang members into a government-funded repatriation program and call it a constitutional necessity.

Boasberg stated the men would be taken into custody upon arrival. So the endgame of this order is: spend taxpayer money to fly suspected Tren de Aragua members back to the United States, then detain them here while they litigate. That is not due process vindicating individual liberty. That is the judicial system forcing the executive to import its own caseload.

Meanwhile, actual American communities — the ones dealing with TdA's violence, extortion, and trafficking — get no such solicitous concern from the bench.

What Comes Next

The Trump administration will almost certainly challenge this order. The Supreme Court has already demonstrated a willingness to check Boasberg on this exact issue, and a 5-4 majority found his earlier intervention procedurally flawed. Whether the justices take up this latest iteration depends on how aggressively the DOJ moves — but the legal and political incentives all point toward escalation.

The broader fight, though, isn't really about these particular deportees. It's about whether the executive branch can enforce immigration law at speed and scale, or whether every removal action will be litigated into paralysis by judges who treat deportation itself as an injustice.

Hundreds of suspected gang members were removed from the country. One judge in Washington wants them brought back. The government that deported them would foot the bill. And the communities those gangs terrorized? They don't get a hearing.