WASHINGTON — Most judges on a federal appeals court seemed inclined during oral arguments Tuesday to allow a federal judge to continue investigating Trump officials for possible criminal contempt-of-court charges for defying a judicial order by sending more than 100 Venezuelan men to a brutal Salvadoran prison last year.  

The administration is challenging if U.S. District Judge James Boasberg can continue a contempt investigation after the Justice Department said former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was the sole official responsible for violating Boasberg’s oral and written orders.

Ending an inquiry would be “unfair” to Noem, “who might be a sacrificial lamb because you have picked who you want to go forward,” Judge J. Michelle Childs said. 

The case stems from a proclamation that President Donald Trump signed in March 2025 that invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to rapidly deport Venezuelan males 14 years and older who were suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang. 

The American Civil Liberties Union sued to stop several deportation flights of 137 Venezuelans, and Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order to stop the removals. But the flights landed in El Salvador and the men were detained at a brutal mega-prison known as CECOT for four months before being released in a prison exchange with Venezuela. 

The Department of Justice has only identified Noem as the official who decided to allow the planes to land in El Salvador despite the restraining order.

Boasberg is trying to identify other government officials who may also bear responsibility. The ACLU has argued the officials who provided legal advice, including now-Attorney General Todd Blanche, should be included.

All judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit participated in the rare full-court review. 

They are: Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, Patricia A. Millett, Cornelia T.L. Pillard, Robert L. Wilkins, Gregory G. Katsas, Neomi Rao, Justin R. Walker, Childs, Florence Y. Pan, Bradley N. Garcia, Harry T. Edwards, Douglas H. Ginsburg, A. Raymond Randolph and Judith W. Rogers.

Former President Jimmy Carter nominated Edwards; former President Ronald Regan nominated Henderson and Ginsburg; former President George H.W. Bush nominated Randolph; former President Bill Clinton nominated Rogers; former President Barack Obama nominated Srinivasan, Millett, Pillard and Wilkins; Trump nominated Katsas, Rao and Walker in his first term and former President Joe Biden nominated Childs, Pan and Garcia.

Judge not a prosecutor, DOJ says

Representing the Trump administration, Brett A. Shumate, the assistant attorney general leading the DOJ’s Civil Division, argued that Boasberg does not have the authority to investigate possible criminal contempt charges and that role is only for a prosecutor. 

“District judges do not investigate or prosecute crimes,” Shumate said. “That’s a role for a prosecutor, and so the purpose of the investigation at this point is no longer, let’s figure out who the decisionmaker was. It is now, let’s probe the mental state of senior government officials.”

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the March 2025 order from Boasberg clearly prohibited the Trump administration from transferring the Venezuelan men to CECOT, and that Boasberg should be allowed to conduct his preliminary inquiry to identify any other potential official who violated his ruling.  

“The oral order was crystal clear,” Gelernt said. 

Blance, Bove provided legal advice

Boasberg’s inquiry involves Blanche and Emil Bove, who were both high-ranking DOJ officials at the time. Bove is a judge in the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

Blanche and Bove gave legal advice to Joseph Mazzara, then the acting general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, who informed Noem of Boasberg’s oral and written temporary restraining order that blocked the deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. 

“After receiving that legal advice, Secretary Noem directed that the (Alien Enemies Act) detainees who had been removed from the United States before the Court’s order could be transferred to the custody of El Salvador,” according to a filing by DOJ.

According to a June 2025 whistleblower account, Bove told a group of attorneys at the department before the Venezuelan men were removed, that the deportations would still occur and “we may have to say f— you to the courts,” if an order blocking the removals was issued by a judge. 

Before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing to become a judge, Bove denied the June 2025 whistleblower account.

Boasberg also wants to hear testimony from the whistleblower, then-DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni, and Drew Ensign, a DOJ attorney who appeared before him in March 2025.

More facts needed

Shumate argued Tuesday that Boasberg already had the information he needed, and that the DOJ already noted that Noem was the government official who ordered the planes to continue to El Salvador.

Childs disagreed and said that there could be officials in that decisionmaking process other than Noem.

Shumate said that all Boasberg had asked the federal government was who made the decision.

“We’ve provided that information, but somehow that’s no longer good enough,” he said. 

Millett agreed with Childs that there seemed to be multiple people involved in the decision that Noem made. 

“It’s clear from the declarations that she was receiving legal advice from a number of people within the Justice Department,” Millett said. “Now, if an attorney providing legal advice to the secretary were to tell the secretary, ‘you have the legal authority to f-expletive the court order on this and go ahead and disembark people,’ might it be accurate that that attorney would just as well be in contempt of court as the secretary, potentially?” 

Shumate said that would “depend on the facts.”

“Well, then the district court has to ask some more questions,” she said.

Vice President JD Vance took to the GOP convention stage in Dallas on Thursday in what served as a re-introduction ahead of a widely anticipated run for the party’s presidential nomination in 2028. 

The former U.S. senator from Ohio sought to rally the GOP base on the second and final day of the unusual gathering, as Republicans vie to retain control of the U.S. House and Senate in the midterms less than two months away, even as President Donald Trump faces anemic approval ratings amid the war in Iran and concerns surrounding the economy. 

Vance repeatedly maligned Democrats as “crazies,” referencing some of the more controversial statements recent primary winners have made. And he urged the enthusiastic crowd to put aside policy differences with GOP candidates to keep “the party of common sense” in power.

“It’s so much more than having good politicians in Washington,” he said. “It’s about sending a message to the Democratic Party that if you send your crazies, we’re going to send you packing.” 

At one point during his speech, members of the crowd chanted “48” — an apparent signal of support for Vance to become the 48th president. Vance responded: “We got to take care of business this November — then we’ll worry about what comes next.” 

‘Birthright’

Vance infused the recent birth of his fourth child into his speech. He and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, welcomed son Alec Neel Vance in July.  

And he portrayed what he called Republicans’ support for Americans’ “birthright” as a major theme heading into November. 

“I believe that our founders built this nation on a promise that echoes our creator: That every American child is born an heir — is born with a birthright,” Vance said, adding that “that birthright, ladies and gentlemen, is what this November is all about.” 

Several times, Vance accused immigrants living in the country illegally of stealing what should belong to U.S. citizens. He said that Democrats, particularly former President Joe Biden, encouraged that theft.

“My little boy, he is now our fellow citizen, though he doesn’t know it,” he said. “And I think about what the Democrats have said about our shared birthright as Americans, or frankly, the lack thereof.” 

Vance said the birth of his youngest son shifted his focus to the future.

“Now, because we got a new kid around, I can’t help but look at the future of this country through the eyes of the future of my son,” he said. “And I can’t help but think about what it is that we’re fighting for and what it is that we want for all of our children.” 

Vance honors Charlie Kirk

The vice president also paid tribute to his late friend and conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot while speaking on a Utah college campus one year ago Thursday. 

Vance praised Kirk as a devoted husband and father, addressing Kirk’s two young children, saying: “For those of us who loved your dad, we knew him as something even better than a great man. He was a good man.” 

Later in his speech, Vance urged voters to “do what Charlie did: Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater — don’t give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here or there.” 

‘Trump’s most loyal puppet’

Kendall Witmer, rapid response director for the Democratic National Committee, blasted Vance as “Donald Trump’s most loyal puppet,” noting that the vice president is “working in lockstep to enact an agenda that has hiked prices and made life unaffordable for working families,” in a statement Thursday night.  

“Vance has defended even their most disastrous policies, proving his loyalty to Trump over the American people,” Witmer said. “Vance will continue to gaslight Americans, but voters know the truth: Trump and Vance have tanked the economy, plunged the country into more endless wars, and failed to make life more affordable for everyday Americans.”

Vance is slated to deliver remarks Monday at an industrial manufacturing facility in Olathe, Kansas, during an event hosted by Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc. 

On Monday, he will also visit a federal law enforcement facility in Kansas City, Missouri, where he is set to speak on the Trump administration’s sweeping anti-fraud effort, which he has helmed. 

WASHINGTON —  Temporary protected status for 170,000 Salvadorans is set to expire at midnight Wednesday, but the Department of Homeland Security said protections will remain in place until the Trump administration makes a decision to extend or terminate El Salvador’s designation, in place since 2001.

“An announcement on El Salvador’s TPS will be made at the appropriate time,” a DHS spokesperson said in an email to States Newsroom. “Until such announcement is made, Salvadoran individuals present in the U.S. under TPS retain protection.”

Based on the temporary protected status statute, if a determination to extend or terminate a country’s protections is not made by the government by the expiration of the deadline, then TPS is automatically extended for six months.

If the Trump administration does make a determination to end protections, then Salvadorans will have 60 days to leave the United States.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has not indicated his plans for El Salvador’s temporary legal protections. Additionally, there is no notice in Wednesday’s Federal Register or a preview of Thursday’s edition regarding TPS for El Salvador. 

On Tuesday, White House border czar Tom Homan said the decision would be up to Mullin, but added that El Salvador is now much safer than when its previous designation was made in 2001. 

If TPS is terminated for nationals for El Salvador, they will be the latest large group of immigrants to lose their legal status in the country as President Donald Trump has sought to dismantle the program Congress created for people who hail from countries deemed too dangerous for return. 

The Supreme Court has accelerated that move. The court’s conservative majority this summer determined that the TPS statute does not allow decisions on country designations, terminations and extensions to be subject to judicial review. 

Before the start of the second Trump administration, 17 countries had TPS, totaling to about 1.3 million immigrants with legal status. 

Now, if TPS for El Salvador ends, only three countries will remain: Lebanon, Sudan and Ukraine. 

TPS is granted to nationals who hail from a country experiencing a natural disaster, violence, or other extreme circumstances, allowing them to remain in the U.S. and obtain work permits that last for six-to-18-month cycles. 

Each renewal process requires a TPS holder to go through a background check and pay hundreds of dollars in fees as well as undergo other vetting.  

If TPS ends for El Salvador, it could stymie the country’s economy, where more than a quarter of its gross domestic product relies on money sent back to the country from Salvadorans in the U.S., known as remittances. 

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, also has a close relationship with the Trump administration, ranging from accepting deportees that are not Salvadoran into his country to visiting the president at the White House.

In 2019, Bukele asked the first Trump administration to extend TPS protections, not because El Salvador was unsafe, but because the end of designation would break apart families in the U.S. 

Bukele has not made any recent public calls for the Trump administration to continue TPS for Salvadorans. 

WASHINGTON — For years, Jose Palma has advocated for immigrants with Temporary Protected Status who hail from countries deemed too unstable for return.

But as the Trump administration has stripped those humanitarian protections for nearly a million people, the Salvadoran national is uncertain if his own legal status will remain in place next week. 

“I’m going day by day,” Palma, who lives in Texas, told States Newsroom in an interview. 

Within two years under the Trump administration, the bipartisan humanitarian Temporary Protected Status program created by Congress in 1990 and signed into law by former Republican President George H.W. Bush has been nearly obliterated.

Palma first obtained TPS in 2001, along with roughly 170,000 recipients from El Salvador, due to several earthquakes that displaced more than one-sixth of the population and left thousands dead. The United States renewed protections over the years, citing continued displacement and ongoing violence.

But the TPS designation for El Salvador is set to expire Sept. 9, and the Department of Homeland Security has made no indication if protections will be renewed. 

Under DHS policy, an announcement typically is made 60 days in advance of the date of a TPS expiration if a renewal is planned. 

Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who helped write the statute for TPS when he was a congressional staffer, said he’s asked Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to renew protections for El Salvador.

“I still haven’t received a response back,” McGovern said during a Thursday press conference at the U.S. Capitol. He was joined by Nebraska GOP Rep. Don Bacon, who said many Salvadoran TPS recipients work and live in his Omaha district. 

DHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment. 

The Trump administration’s position on the program is that it’s “temporary,” and that country conditions have improved, despite warnings from the State Department to not travel to some of those countries where TPS designation has ended, such as Haiti.

If TPS for El Salvador ends, only 103,000 out of initially 1.3 million recipients from around the globe will have protections: 150 from Lebanon, 1,790 from Sudan and 101,150 from Ukraine.

Supreme Court decision

TPS is granted to nationals who hail from a country experiencing a natural disaster, violence, or other extreme circumstances, allowing them to remain in the U.S. and obtain work permits. 

Some protections can last through six-to-18-month cycles, and each renewal process requires a TPS holder to go through a background check and other vetting.  

Before the second Trump administration, 17 countries were in the program. Only four, including El Salvador, remain as the White House has forged ahead aggressively on its mass deportation campaign. 

The Supreme Court made the move easier after it ruled this summer that decisions from the executive branch to end TPS were not subject to judicial review. The order meant that lower courts that initially blocked the Trump administration from ending the designations had to reverse their decisions.

Now recipients face the end of TPS with just 60 days’ notice.

“It’s one of those things that is kind of cruel, to have families who are stable and have been stable for decades, to have people who have been doing everything the government asked them to do for 25 years, and suddenly, if the decision is to end TPS, provided only 60 days protection before forcing people to go back to a country they haven’t been for decades,” Palma said. 

One of the first countries after TPS was written into law to receive the designation was El Salvador. 

Stripping TPS from Salvadorans would not only harm the U.S. economy, but it would also negatively impact El Salvador’s fragile economy, advocates predict. More than one quarter of El Salvador’s Gross Domestic Product comes from family members sending money back to relatives in their country of origin, known as remittances. 

“El Salvador’s economy has been built thanks to all the remittances,” said Ana María Méndez-Dardón, the director for Central America at the Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA.  “So if people are returning, that would have a huge impact because the economy depends on the money that people from El Salvador living in the U.S. send to El Salvador.”

The spending also has an impact in the United States. Salvadoran TPS recipients contribute $5.4 billion to the U.S. economy and pay $1.5 billion in federal, state and local taxes, according to the immigration advocacy research group FWD.us. 

About 152,000 TPS recipients from El Salvador are in the workforce, mainly in construction, manufacturing, building and transportation.

Attempts in Congress

TPS does not create a pathway to citizenship and a recipient can only apply for it when the country receives its designation. 

Some TPS recipients can apply for asylum if they qualify, or others could apply to adjust their status to that of a lawful permanent resident, or green-card holder, through a family-based or employer-based petition. 

Congress has made some effort to extend TPS for some recipients. Earlier this year, the House passed a bill to extend TPS for up to 350,000 Haitians on a bipartisan basis, but it’s stalled in the upper chamber. 

Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen attempted to advance a bill in the Senate to create a legal pathway to citizenship for immigrants with TPS, but was blocked by Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt. 

McGovern said Thursday that there is a bipartisan push to extend protections for TPS recipients. Proof of that was Bacon’s presence at the press conference.

“What good is it to force out folks who’ve been here legally, who are working, who are part of our community?” Bacon said. “It does no one any good.”

Human rights in El Salvador

Many Salvadorian TPS recipients are worried about being forced back to El Salvador, where human rights groups have raised concerns about the authoritarian government of President Nayib Bukele, said WOLA’s Méndez-Dardón.

WOLA is a research and advocacy group that aims to advance human rights in North and South America. It has documented how Bukele’s political party has suspended due process rights and has carried out a mass incarceration of suspected gang members in an effort to reduce crime and murders. 

More than 90,000 Salvadorans have been jailed without due process and hundreds have died in prisons and altogether disappeared, human rights groups have reported.

“So for Salvadorians who might be returned, the risk no longer are the criminal groups or the gangs because many of them fled the country because of the security situation,” Méndez-Dardón said. “But although the gangs are no longer the threat, now the threat is the state.” 

Bukele has met with President Donald Trump several times at the White House and has a years-long working relationship with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who last year granted El Salvador the highest possible safety rating for travel, a level 1. 

In 2024, the State Department gave El Salvador a level 3 advisory, warning people to reconsider travel because of security and safety concerns.

The Trump administration also last year made a deal with the Salvadoran government to pay up to $6 million to detain hundreds of Venezuelans at a brutal mega-prison. In the high-profile case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland Salvadoran who was mistakenly deported to the mega prison, lawyers documented mental and physical torture he experienced while there. 

“People are basically under a constant fear of being detained by the security forces,” Méndez-Dardón said. 

U.S. citizen children

Palma, who also attended the press conference, said he, along with other Salvadoran TPS recipients, are concerned about El Salvador’s government.

“So crime has gone down, but now abuses to human rights have increased,” he said. “That is concerning, because it’s also the government is becoming more aggressive against opposition, public media.”

Palma questioned if El Salvador would have the infrastructure to accept as many as 200,000 Salvadorans, made up of the TPS recipients and their families. Many have U.S. citizen children. 

Palma, who has four U.S. citizen children, said two of his kids are still in primary school. One is 11 and another is 8 years old. 

“This is their country,” he said of his four children. “They are from here. But if I were to lose the TPS protection and I were to be forced to go back to El Salvador, it’s not just affecting me. It’s affecting the whole family. That’s kind of like the situation that so many people across the country are going through right now.”

Supporting her mom

There are roughly 150,000 U.S. citizen children who have a parent who is a Salvadoran TPS recipient, according to the National TPS alliance. 

Cristel Argueta is one of those children. At 20 years old, she’s a college student at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. But on Thursday, she missed four classes relating to her criminology and criminal justice degree to travel to the nation’s capital and advocate for an extension to TPS for El Salvador. 

“I’m missing class to be here, but it’s worth it because it’s for my family,” she said.

Her mother, a TPS holder from El Salvador, came to the U.S. when she was 19, fleeing the civil war that lasted from 1979 until 1992. Her mother was able to get TPS in 2001.

“She has been in this country longer than she has been in El Salvador,” Argueta said. “TPS was started by Salvadorans, and I don’t want to lose my mother.” 

She’s hoping her mother’s TPS is extended until at least Argueta’s 21st birthday, when Argueta will be able to become a sponsor and apply to change her mother’s status to that of a lawful permanent resident. 

“No one should be going through this at any age,” she said. “Seeing the difference in my peers at school who are 20 years old, waiting to turn 21, to get that first legal drink or go party, but I want to turn 21 just to give my mom a legal status. A permanent legal status.”

WASHINGTON — A federal judge over the weekend allowed the Trump administration to force-feed the man charged with shooting two National Guard members, killing one and injuring another, in the District of Columbia in November.

For months, Rahmanullah Lakanwal has refused to eat while incarcerated. 

The Aug. 29 order from U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta of the District of Columbia gives the go-ahead for medical staff at the Bureau of Prisons to conduct several types of nonconsensual feeding methods “to preserve defendant Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s life or to prevent a foreseeable deterioration in his condition that if not treated is likely to lead to death; replacement, maintenance, and care of defendant’s feeding tube when medically necessary; and lab work relating to the administration of nutrition.”

The order will allow for a feeding tube through Lakanwal’s nasal passage and into his stomach to provide nutrients; feeding through veins; or feeding through an already established tube connected to his stomach. The order does not allow for a tube to be established through his stomach, usually done via surgery. 

The Department of Justice charged Lakanwal with first-degree murder in the shooting of 20-year-old U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom and with the attempted murder of U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe. Lakanwal has pleaded not guilty to all 17 DOJ charges. 

He is an Afghan national who came to the United States under a humanitarian program after the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from the country. Following the shooting, the Trump administration paused all immigration processing for nationals from Afghanistan. A federal judge later reversed that move.  

The two West Virginia guard members last year were shot on Thanksgiving eve while stationed blocks from the White House as part of the president’s crackdown on crime, despite a continued decrease in violent crime.

Mehta, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, has in the past considered but turned down the Trump administration’s requests for a court-ordered nonconsensual nutrition supplement, noting that Lakanwal has refused meals and medical treatment. 

In several hearings in federal court before Mehta, Lakanwal has appeared gaunt and has used a wheelchair. 

Mehta’s order will remain in effect until Oct. 28 and will allow the DOJ to request an extension if needed.