Justice Department officials, citing privilege, did not disclose details about the legal advice provided to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem regarding the decision to proceed with the deportation of more than 100 Venezuelans to El Salvador in March.
Statements filed in court on Friday are a response to a contempt investigation launched by U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who is determining whether Noem or anyone else should be referred for possible contempt proceedings.
Friday’s court papers were filed after Justice Department lawyers said in a document last week that Noem ordered the deportation flights to continue despite Boasberg’s order to return the planes to the US. while hearing a legal challenge to the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to deport Venezuelans, whom the Trump administration accused of being gang members.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks at a news conference at Harry Reid International Airport, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025, in Las Vegas.
Churchill/AP Round
In her statement, Noem confirmed that she made the decision to proceed with the transfer of detainees after receiving legal advice from Justice Department leaders and Joseph Mazarra, the acting general counsel of DHS.
In Friday’s presentations, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, a Justice Department official in March and now a U.S. Circuit judge, declined to provide details about the “privileged” legal advice they provided to Noem.
“The Department of Justice has not authorized me to disclose privileged information in this statement,” Bove said.
Mazarra, in his statement, said that he analyzed Judge Boasberg’s decision order that sought to block deportations and later provided Noem with legal advice.
“DHS had removed these terrorists from the United States before this Court issued any order (or oral statement regarding their removal),” Mazarra wrote. at Friday’s presentation.
In a separate filing, Justice Department lawyers said it would be “harmful and constitutionally inappropriate” to compel officials who submitted depositions to testify before being committed to trial.
In this photo provided by the Salvadoran government, guards escort a newly admitted inmate allegedly linked to criminal organizations at CECOT on March 16, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador. The Trump administration deported 238 alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal organizations ‘Tren De Aragua’ and Mara Salvatrucha and only 23 were members of the Mara.
Leaflet/Salvadoran Government via Getty
“[The] “The court has all the information it needs to make a referral if it believes it is warranted, and additional factual investigation by the court would raise constitutional and privilege concerns,” Justice Department lawyers said.
In response to the statements, Lee Gelernt, senior attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, who has challenged AEA deportations in court, told ABC News that “the Trump administration is again refusing to cooperate with a federal court.”
In March, the Trump administration invoked the AEA (an 18th-century wartime authority used to deport noncitizens with little or no due process) to deport two planeloads of suspected migrant gang members to the CECOT megaprison in El Salvador, arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the United States.
At a court hearing on March 15, Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order and ordered that the planes carrying detainees be returned, but Justice Department lawyers have said that his oral instructions ordering the flight to return were flawed and that the deportations proceeded as planned.
Boasberg’s earlier conclusion that the Trump administration likely acted in contempt was halted for months after an appeals court issued an emergency suspension. A federal appeals court last month refused to refund Boasberg’s original order, but the ruling allowed him to move forward with his fact-finding investigation.
