Two hundred Venezuelan asylum seekers.
A secret overnight flight to El Salvador’s notorious CEC prison.
A federal judge’s order to stop the planes — and a Trump official who, according to the court, may have ignored him anyway.
That’s the heart of the case now circling around Trump Homeland Security Secretary Christi Noem, and it just took a very serious turn.
On March 15, in an emergency afternoon hearing, Chief Judge James Boasberg told the Trump administration’s lawyer, DOJ attorney Drew Ensign, in no uncertain terms: ground the planes. Do not fly these 200 Venezuelans out of U.S. jurisdiction without due process.
Yet the flights to El Salvador went ahead.
That, as legal analyst Michael Popok explains, is textbook contempt of court — “contumacious conduct” in the judge’s own language. And Judge Boasberg has already said there is probable cause that criminal contempt was committed.
The only question now is who gets tagged for it… and whether that ends with a criminal referral.
“Who Gave the Code Red?”
For months, the Trump administration tried to blur responsibility. First they blamed a subordinate — “Santiago” — for the decision to continue the transfer even after the restraining order.
Judge Boasberg didn’t buy it.
He pressed the government to name the actual decision-maker. Under pressure, they finally did: Christi Noem.
The judge then demanded a sworn declaration from Noem explaining why she went ahead. What he got back was, in his words, “cursory.”
In a brief two-paragraph affidavit, Noem claimed she knew about the hearing, learned about the order late at night through her lawyers, and somehow still gave the go-ahead. It read less like a serious explanation and more like a shrug: I didn’t really know… I just did it.
Boasberg wasn’t impressed.
He ruled that, for now, he can’t yet conclude that Noem willfully violated his order — and therefore a criminal referral would be “premature.”
But that word “premature” came with a warning: he’s not closing the door. He’s opening the record.
Enter the Whistleblower — And the “F– You” Theory of Justice
To get to the bottom of it, Boasberg is calling witnesses — and they’re not low-level flunkies.
First up: Arez (Erez) Ruveni, a former senior DOJ immigration litigator turned whistleblower. In a 30-page complaint to Congress and a 60 Minutes appearance, Ruveni described a March 14 meeting with Trump’s then–#3 at DOJ, Amul (Amal) Boi, a former Trump criminal defense lawyer.
According to Ruveni, Boi told career lawyers:
- Trump was invoking the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law from 1798 historically used only in major wars, to rapidly expel Venezuelans labeled as “terrorists.”
- The planes “need to take off no matter what.”
- And if a court tried to stop them, DOJ might have to consider telling that court, “F– you.”
Ruveni said it felt like a “bomb had gone off” — the third-ranking official at DOJ openly floating ignoring federal court orders.
Boi, now parked on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, denied recalling that language when grilled by Rep. Adam Schiff. But “I don’t recall” is a thin shield against a detailed whistleblower statement and contemporaneous notes.
Now Judge Boasberg wants Ruveni on the stand, under oath, in his courtroom.
Drew Ensign’s Very Bad Day Is Coming
Next witness: Drew Ensign himself, the DOJ lawyer who stood in front of Boasberg on March 15 and heard the order to ground the planes.
Boasberg has already warned Ensign once that a lawyer only has one thing in a courtroom — his reputation for telling the truth. That warning is now coming due.
The judge wants to know:
- What exactly did Ensign know about the flight status when he was in court?
- Did he tell his superiors the planes had already taken off?
- Did he mislead the judge, by omission or otherwise, about what the administration was doing while the hearing was happening?
The government has quietly moved Ensign off the case. Boasberg is now dragging him back in.
Both Ruveni and Ensign have been ordered to appear for live testimony in December, with both sides — the ACLU on behalf of the Venezuelan plaintiffs and the government — and the judge himself allowed to question them.
In other words: this is turning into a full-blown mini-trial on contempt.
How This Could End for Christi Noem
Right now, Boasberg says a criminal referral against Noem would be “premature.”
But here’s what’s already on the table, according to his own order:
- He’s already found probable cause that criminal contempt occurred.
- He’s rejected the government’s first round of “cursory” declarations as inadequate.
- He’s now taking sworn testimony from the whistleblower who says top DOJ brass told lawyers to ignore courts — and from the DOJ lawyer who carried that posture into Boasberg’s own courtroom.
If that evidence shows Noem:
- knew about the order,
- understood it applied to those flights, and
- chose to let the transfers proceed anyway,
then “premature” can very quickly become “ripe” — and the next step is a formal criminal contempt referral to prosecutors.
That means fines. It can also mean jail time.
The message from Boasberg is simple: court orders are not suggestions. Not for low-level agents, not for DOJ brass, and not for Trump’s cabinet.
Somebody gave the code red. The judge intends to find out exactly who — and what they knew when those planes to El Salvador took off.
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