On August 8, in a two-to-one decision, a Trump-dominated federal appeals court blocked a district court’s criminal contempt proceedings against the Trump administration for disappearing people to El Salvador in apparent violation of a lower court’s temporary injunction. “The district court’s order raises troubling questions about judicial control over core executive functions like the conduct of foreign policy and the prosecution of criminal offenses,” Trump appointee D.C. Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas wrote in his concurring opinion. “And it implicates an unsettled issue whether the judiciary may impose criminal contempt for violating injunctions entered without jurisdiction.” In addition to Katsas, the three-judge panel includes Neomi Rao, an appointee of Trump, and Cornelia Pillard, a Barack Obama appointee, who dissented. “The rule of law depends on obedience to judicial orders,” Pillard wrote in her dissenting opinion. “Our system of courts cannot long endure if disappointed litigants defy court orders with impunity rather than legally challenge them. That is why willful disobedience of a court order is punishable as criminal contempt.” In March, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — which had last been used to justify the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II — in order to send hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT. People incarcerated at the prison have been beaten, humiliated, denied medical care, and tortured. Before the first deportation flight took off for El Salvador, in the early morning hours of March 15, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Democracy Forward, and the ACLU of D.C. filed a class action suit on behalf of the men that the Trump administration planned to disappear to CECOT. According to a timeline from the ACLU, Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the District Court for D.C. temporarily barred the Trump administration later that morning from deporting the five named plaintiffs, and ordered an evening to determine if the order should include everyone the administration was planning to send to El Salvador. During the hearing, Boasberg asked the government’s attorney if deportations to El Salavdor were imminent; when the attorney said they didn’t know, the judge briefly adjourned the hearing so the attorney could find out and report back to the court. But during that time, the government flew two planes to El Salvador. After the hearing resumed, the judge blocked the deportations, and ordered any planes headed to El Salvador to immediately return. “[Y]ou shall inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States, but those people need to be returned to the United States,” Boasberg told the government’s attorney. “[T]his is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.” Less than an hour later, the government sent a third flight to El Salvador. A subsequent Supreme Court ruling, which is dominated by Republican-appointed justices, vacated the judge’s temporary injunction. Boasberg initiated criminal contempt proceedings against the Trump administration in response to its refusal to comply with his order to return the men to the United States. Then, in July, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to file a misconduct complaint against Boasberg. While the appeals court has stopped criminal contempt proceedings against the Trump administration for now, the plaintiffs can appeal. “We strongly disagree with the ruling and are considering all options going forward,” ACLU Attorney Lee Gelernt told Politico after the appeals court’s ruling. “The opinion brushes aside the considerable evidence that has emerged that DOJ’s lawyers understood the order at the time and simply ignored it.” Contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, a CBS News investigation found that 75 percent of the men disappeared to El Salvador did not have any criminal charges or convictions. At least 22 percent had criminal records, although “the vast majority are for non-violent offenses like theft, shoplifting and trespassing.” About 12 out of over 230 people sent to CECOT have been accused of more serious crimes, like murder, rape, assault and kidnapping. One of the men who was disappeared to CECOT is a professional soccer player, Jerce Reyes Barrios, who has no criminal convictions and was seeking asylum in the United States. Barrios’s attorney told NPR that the government has claimed her client is a gang member based on a tattoo and a Facebook post from more than ten years ago. In the post, he made a hand gesture, which is “commonly known as the Rock and Roll hand signal, or it’s sign language for ‘I love you.’” Barrios’s tattoo depicts a crown over a soccer ball in honor of his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid. In July, the men were finally flown home to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap deal with the United States. Many have spoken out about the torturous conditions they endured. Musician Arturo Suárez told The Guardian that the abuse began the moment they arrived. As he was dragged off the bus, he asked a guard to help him with his glasses, which were falling off his face. The guard punched him in the face, breaking his glasses. “Welcome to hell!” the warden told them, Suárez recalled. “Welcome to the cemetery of the living dead! You’ll leave here dead!”