Trump Calls for Judge in Deportations Case to Be Impeached

President Trump on Tuesday escalated his campaign to discredit judges who get in his way, calling on Congress to impeach the judge at the center of a legal fight over the deportation of hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador.

Posting on his website TruthSocial, Trump called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered Trump to halt his use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants suspected of belonging to transnational criminal gangs. Despite the judge’s order, administration officials let the deportations continue in apparent defiance of the court, and flights carrying 261 people removed from the U.S. landed over the weekend in El Salvador, where the Salvadorian government says they have been imprisoned.

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Trump called Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic” and “a troublemaker and agitator.” He also mocked the idea that a federal judge could constrain his actions as President. “He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE,” Trump wrote. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”

Boasberg was appointed as a federal judge by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in March 2011. He became the chief judge of the District Court of the District of Columbia in 2023. Earlier in his career, Boasberg worked as a U.S. attorney specializing in homicide prosecutions and President George W. Bush appointed him in 2002 to the D.C. superior court as an associate judge presiding over civil, criminal and domestic violence cases before being named to the federal bench. 

Only Congress has the authority to remove a federal judge, and the process is similar to how Congress can remove a President. First the House must vote to impeach a judge, which would require a simple majority. If that succeeds, then the Senate holds a trial and votes whether to convict. A conviction requires two thirds of the votes in the Senate to pass.

In the past 250 years, Congress has impeached 15 federal judges, and the Senate has convicted only eight of them, according to a tally by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The most recent federal judge to be removed from office by Congress was G. Thomas Porteous, Jr., a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Porteous was convicted by the Senate in December 2010 on charges of accepting bribes and making false statements under penalty of perjury.

​​Rep. Brandon Gill, a Republican from Texas, posted on X Tuesday that he planned to file articles of impeachment against Boasberg in the House. House Republicans have either threatened to file or filed articles of impeachment against at least four other federal judges who have ruled against Trump since he took office on Jan. 20.

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