The Trump administration is snatching people without due process.
On the evening of Saturday, March 15, 2025, this Court issued a written Temporary Restraining Order barring the Government from transferring certain individuals into foreign custody pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act. At the time the Order issued, those individuals were on planes being flown overseas, having been spirited out of the United States by the Government before they could vindicate their due-process rights by contesting their removability in a federal court, as the law requires. Trump v. J.G.G., 2025 WL 1024097, at *2 (U.S. Apr. 7, 2025) (per curiam). Rather than comply with the Court’s Order, the Government continued the hurried removal operation. Early on Sunday morning — hours after the Order issued — it transferred two planeloads of passengers protected by the TRO into a Salvadoran mega-prison.
As this Opinion will detail, the Court ultimately determines that the Government’s actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt. 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.
One might nonetheless ask how this inquiry into compliance is able to proceed at all given that the Supreme Court vacated the TRO after the events in question. That Court’s later determination that the TRO suffered from a legal defect, however, does not excuse the Government’s violation. Instead, it is a foundational legal precept that every judicial order “must be obeyed” — no matter how “erroneous” it “may be” — until a court reverses it. Walker v. City of Birmingham, 388 U.S. 307, 314 (1967). If a party chooses to disobey the order — rather than wait for it to be reversed through the judicial process — such disobedience is punishable as contempt, notwithstanding any later-revealed deficiencies in the order. See id. at 314, 320. That foundational “rule of law” answers not just how this compliance inquiry can proceed, but why it must. See id. at 320. The rule “reflects a belief that in the fair administration of justice no man can be judge in his own case,” no matter how “exalted his station” or “righteous his motives.” Id. at 320–21.
The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it. To permit such officials to freely “annul the judgments of the courts of the United States” would not just “destroy the rights acquired under those judgments”; it would make “a solemn mockery” of “the constitution itself.” United States v. Peters, 9 U.S. (5 Cranch) 115, 136 (1809) (Marshall, C.J.). “So fatal a result must be deprecated by all.” Id.
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The Court is exceedingly doubtful that the [state-secrets] privilege applies here. It is not inquiring into the diplomatic agreements that facilitated the flights nor the operational specifics of how Defendants apprehended and transported class members. Instead, the Court is simply seeking to confirm times and numbers: how many passengers the two flights carried, whether they were all deported pursuant to the Proclamation, and when they were transferred out of U.S. custody. See Minute Order of Mar. 18, 2:27 p.m. The Court is skeptical that such information rises to the level of a state secret. As noted, the Government has widely publicized details of the flights through social media and official announcements, see supra p. 11 (reposting video showing operational details); ECF No. 69 (Resp. to State Secrets) at 4–10, thereby revealing snippets of the information the Court seeks and raising doubts that such information would jeopardize future diplomatic engagements or operational security. Defendants, moreover, have still not asserted that the information is even classified, and they have identified no case in which unclassified material was nonetheless protected by the privilege. Nor is the Court yet persuaded that even if publicly disclosing the information might harm state secrets, sharing it only ex parte with a federal court would do the same.
