U.S. District Judge James Boasberg—with a history of halting Trump administration policies—sided with the president in a case regarding deporting criminal illegal immigrants to El Salvador.
Boasberg, the chief judge in the District of Columbia and an appointee of President Barack Obama, sided with the administration against liberal groups who sued to prevent illegal immigrants from El Salvador convicted of crimes in the United States from being deported to prisons back home.
The judge—who previously curbed President Donald Trump’s policies on deporting illegal immigrants and prompted congressional Republicans to call for his impeachment—ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge a diplomatic agreement between two countries.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced an agreement on the policy with El Salvadoran officials in February 2025.
Under the agreement, El Salvador would detain the convicts with the U.S. covering the cost.
The following June, five liberal nonprofits, led by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, sued the State Department to void the policy. The plaintiffs alleged the prisoners were subjected to human rights abuses and couldn’t contact their legal counsel.
The groups claimed standing since they provided legal counsel, saying the policy impeded their ability to communicate with clients.
“This Court is all too familiar with the Government’s hasty deportation of immigrants to El Salvador, though only through the lens of individual removals,” said Boasberg’s opinion issued on Wednesday.
“The present suit arrives from a different vantage point, training its sights not on those removals but on the diplomatic instrument that preceded and allegedly enabled them.”
The government moved to dismiss the case, which he granted.
“Even assuming the Agreement helped set in motion the events Plaintiffs describe, it does not itself carry independent legal force and vacating it would not likely prevent the conduct that produces their injuries,” he wrote.
He went on to write that the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security would likely have the authority to restart a similar agreement if the courts strike down the existing one.
“The two governments have already reached a meeting of the minds to transfer individuals from the United States to Salvadoran prisons in exchange for funds,” he wrote. “That shared understanding does not dissolve were a court to set aside the Agreement.
“And with the understanding in place, the Government need only reach for the tools it already has — DHS’s statutory removal authority and State’s foreign assistance funding — to execute the same transfers again.”
Early in Trump’s second term, Boasberg ordered a halt to deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants. He later moved toward contempt proceedings when flights continued. A D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated his contempt finding.
In July 2025, the Justice Department filed a misconduct complaint against Boasberg.
In December, Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, proposed articles of impeachment against Boasberg.
During President Joe Biden’s administration, Boasberg approved subpoenas of the phone records of House and Senate Republicans as part of the Justice Department’s “Arctic Frost” investigation into Trump’s challenge of the 2020 election results.