President Donald Trump railed against the judge who halted deportations to a Salvadoran mega-prison, saying it was “statistically IMPOSSIBLE” for the same judge to be randomly assigned to hear a lawsuit on his advisers’ leaked war chat. “There is no way for a Republican, especially a TRUMP REPUBLICAN, to win before him. He is Highly Conflicted, not only in his hatred of me—Massive Trump Derangement Syndrome!—but also, because of disqualifying family conflicts,” the president said of federal Judge James Boasberg in a post on Truth Social. A 2018 court procedure guide says civil cases are assigned using an “automated case assignment system” that screens for potential conflicts of interest, according to a mandatory 2022 screening plan. Trump had previously called for Boasberg to be impeached after he ordered the administration on March 15 not to deport a plane full of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador without any due process. The plane left anyway. On Monday, The Atlantic published a bombshell report about top Trump administration officials using a group chat on Signal—an unsecured commercial messaging app—to coordinate a military strike. Two days later, a nonpartisan watchdog group called American Oversight sued members of the chat—including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—for allegedly breaking federal laws requiring officials to preserve records of their conduct in office. The case was assigned to Boasberg, an Obama appointee who has been the focus of relentless intimidation from Trump and the MAGAverse since blocking the deportation planes. In the deportation case, Trump had invoked the Alien Enemies Act—which applies only when the U.S. is officially at war with a foreign government—to justify deporting alleged members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. But Boasberg temporarily blocked the deportations, pointing out the U.S. was not at war. More than 250 men were nevertheless flown to El Salvador. (The third-party country had agreed to jail the detained Venezuelans for a fee.) Legal filings and press reports have since revealed the danger of deporting planes full of people before a judge has had a chance to confirm their identities. At least one alleged gang member had already been granted legal refugee status in the U.S., while others included a pro soccer player, a gay makeup artist, a 26-year-old barber, and a 24-year-old father—all with no criminal records in the U.S. and all formally seeking asylum. The government has argued in court filings that improper deportations don’t cause “irreparable harm,” even though a 2023 State Department report found that inmates in El Salvador have been electrocuted, tortured, and beaten to death. On Wednesday, the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld Boasberg’s temporary order blocking the deportations. The government “concedes it ‘lack[s] a complete profile’ or even ‘specific information about each individual,‘” according to the decision, which was written by a judge appointed by former President George H.W. Bush. Hours later, Trump wrote it “probably doesn’t matter” that Boasberg was assigned the Signal case, because it is “virtually impossible for me to get an Honest Ruling in D.C.” “Our Nation’s Courts are broken, with New York and D.C. being the most preeminent of all in their Corruption and Radicalism. There must be an immediate investigation of this Rigged System, before it is too late!” he wrote. Last year, Democrats supported a nationwide effort to randomize judicial assignments so plaintiffs would be less likely to file cases in certain districts in an effort to “shop” for sympathetic judges, according to the nonpartisan Brookings Institution. Republicans opposed the move. They wanted anti-abortion groups seeking a nationwide ban on the abortion pill to have the choice of appearing before an anti-abortion judge in Texas.