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A federal judge last week ordered the Trump administration to arrange the return — or provide hearings for — roughly 137 Venezuelan men who were deported to El Salvador this spring, a ruling that will infuriate Americans who expect their leaders to secure the border and enforce immigration law. The order from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg arrived on December 22, 2025, and demanded that the government present a plan to bring these men back within a tight timeline.
These men were sent to a notorious prison known as CECOT after the administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act in March, a move designed to target alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang — yet the judge found their removals violated basic due-process protections. Boasberg concluded the migrants were given virtually no notice or chance to contest their deportation, and therefore must be afforded hearings or returned to U.S. custody so they can fight those claims.
Patriotic Americans should be watching this not because compassion isn’t important, but because judicial overreach is now undercutting the executive branch’s ability to protect our communities. Boasberg — an Obama appointee whose courtroom activism has repeatedly tangled with national security and immigration policy — is effectively second-guessing the administration’s tactics in the middle of an intentional crackdown on criminal networks. This is raw lawfare dressed up as mercy, and it hands a massive tactical victory to anyone who wants to neuter robust enforcement.
The Justice Department has already signaled it will fight the ruling and has argued in court that the judge is inserting himself into foreign policy decisions, while Boasberg has simultaneously pursued contempt inquiries into whether officials flouted his earlier orders. That tug-of-war between judges and the executive branch is exactly why voters demanded a president willing to secure the border; now, unelected judges are threatening to undo that mandate.
Make no mistake: the underlying issue is real — transnational gangs exploit weak borders and legal loopholes to spread violence — but the solution must be the enforcement tools President Trump and his team deploy, not a court order that invites more legal chaos. If the government is forced to ferry people back into the United States to satisfy a judicial theory of due process, it sets a dangerous precedent that will be seized by open-borders advocacy organizations to hobble every future enforcement action.
Conservatives should demand clarity and resolve: Congress must defend the executive’s authority to use the tools necessary to keep Americans safe, and the administration must appeal this decision while also crafting a lawful plan that protects citizens, respects the rule of law, and denies safe harbor to criminal networks. The American people elected a government to secure the homeland, not to watch career judges steadily unravel that mandate on technicalities and political impulse.
