Chief Justice John Roberts has hit back against in a rare public statement after President Donald Trump on Monday claimed a federal judge lacks the authority to review his administration’s attempts to bypass due process rights when deporting migrants who are alleged to be gang members — and called for the judge to be impeached.
In a statement issued by the court, Roberts said that impeachment isn’t an appropriate response to disagreements with judges’ rulings.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” he said.
Roberts was respond to a post from Trump on his Truth Social platform in which he attacked U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, the current head of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in response to Boasberg pressing Department of Justice attorneys on whether the government had violated a weekend order he issued to halt efforts to deport more than 200 people under the purported authority of a centuries-old law that allows the president to remove immigrants from countries with which the United States is at war.
“This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President – He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, he didn’t WIN 2,750 to 525 Counties, HE DIDN’T WIN ANYTHING! I WON FOR MANY REASONS, IN AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE, BUT FIGHTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER ONE REASON FOR THIS HISTORIC VICTORY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do. This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
Trump’s tirade against Boasberg comes after the federal judge held an emergency hearing on Monday to inquire as to whether the government had disobeyed a Saturday evening emergency order barring deportation of any Venezuelan national targeted under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which Trump invoked late last week by claiming the country was under an “invasion” by Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang which the administration has declared to be a foreign terrorist organization linked to the Venezuelan government.
Boasberg’s order directed the administration not to remove anyone from the country using the authority laid out in a declaration invoking the 1798 law after a group of Venezuelan nationals filed suit. The government has not deported those five named plaintiffs, but planes carrying roughly 250 others who were accused of being members of Tren de Aragua left airports in Texas during a Saturday evening hearing shortly before Boasberg had issued the order.
On Monday, at a second hearing demanded by Boasberg, the jurist became irate when the government insisted that they had urgent national security reasons for keeping the planes in the air instead of turning them around as ordered.
“Any plane that you put into the air in or around that time, you knew that I was having a hearing at 5,” the judge said, according to reports.
He also pressed government attorneys on what happened during an interval between when he orally ordered the administration to “immediately” return any plane carrying deportees under the Alien Enemies Act to the U.S. and a written order with less specific terms being issued on the court docket.
Abhishek Kambli, the deputy associate attorney general who was representing the government during the hearing, maintained that Boasberg’s oral directions had no legal force.
“We believe that there was no order given … an injunction is not ordered until it’s in the written filing,” he said.
Boasberg replied that the prosecutor’s contention was “a heck of a stretch” while rejecting claims that the planes weren’t under his jurisdiction because they’d crossed into international airspace.
“It’s not a question that the plane was or was not in United States airspace,” he said, because federal courts’ jurisdiction does not “lapse at the water’s edge” or “the airspace’s edge.”
After Boasberg refused the Trump administration’s request to cancel Monday’s hearing, the Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to “immediately” remove the case from Boasberg’s courtroom.
He also ordered attorneys to answer a series of questions about the flights, including, critically, what time they left the United States. But Justice Department lawyers repeatedly refused to answer the the queries.
The judge also wants to know how many people were deported solely on the basis of Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, the centuries-old wartime law that Trump has applied for the fourth time in U.S. history.
Lawyers have until noon Tuesday to reply.
Boasberg is just the latest federal judge to draw the ire of Republicans for acting to put brakes on policies or actions put forth by the Trump administration during the 47th president’s tumultuous first months in office.
Already, Republican members of Congress have responded by judges blocking Trump policies by filing articles of impeachment against those judges, who like all federal jurists enjoy life tenure unless removed by a vote of two-thirds of the U.S. Senate following an impeachment trial.
One such Republican, Representative Brandon Gill of Texas, reacted immediately to Trump’s post by filing articles of impeachment against Judge Boasberg and announcing the move in a post on X.
As a practical matter, it’s unheard of for senators to remove judges for disagreeing with an incumbent administration but judges have been removed for crimes or other misconduct in office. And the House has only voted to impeach judges for serious misconduct in the past.
The last federal judge to be stripped of his position was former federal district judge William Porteous, who was removed from office following a 2010 impeachment trial after the House of Representatives voted to impeach him on four separate charges, including perjury and making false statements as well as engaging in “a longstanding pattern of corrupt conduct that demonstrates his unfitness to serve as a United States District Court Judge.”
He was removed by a unanimous vote of the Senate and subsequently barred from ever holding federal office again.
Alex Woodward and Josh Marcus contributed reporting
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