Appeals court tosses judge's contempt finding against Trump administration in prison deportations

WASHINGTON (AP) — A split appeals court panel tossed out a judge’s contempt finding against President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday in a case over deportations to an El Salvador prison.

The decision comes after planes carrying Venezuelan migrants landed at the prison even after U.S District Judge James E. Boasberg said in court they must return to the United States.

Boasberg found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt of court. The ruling marked a dramatic battle between the judicial and executive branches of government.

But the divided three-judge panel in the nation’s capital found that Boasberg had exceeded his authority and intruded on the executive branch’s foreign affairs powers.

Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both of whom were nominated by Trump in his first term in the White House, agreed with the unsigned majority opinion.

“The district court’s order attempts to control the Executive Branch’s conduct of foreign affairs, an area in which a court’s power is at its lowest ebb,” Rao wrote.

Judge Cornelia Pillard, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, dissented. “The majority does an exemplary judge a grave disservice by overstepping its bounds to upend his effort to vindicate the judicial authority that is our shared trust,” she wrote.