At age 16, Kilmar Abrego Garcia fled gang violence in his native country of El Salvador. When he arrived in the United States in 2012, he did not have legal documentation. But in 2019, an immigration judge granted Abrego Garcia legal protection against being deported back to El Salvador, finding that he faced a “clear probability of future persecution” and that Salvadoran authorities were “unable or unwilling to protect him.”
Then, in March 2025, the Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador anyway, and paid Salvadoran authorities $4.76 million to imprison him and hundreds of other U.S. residents.
A few weeks later, the administration conceded that Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador was an “error.” But it resisted bringing him back to the United States and argued that federal courts did not have the authority to order his return. This argument failed, and the Trump administration reluctantly brought Abrego Garcia home last summer. But it has continued to seek retribution against him and threaten him with deportation.
Cases like Abrego Garcia’s used to be less routine. Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an immigration attorney who currently represents Abrego Garcia, told Politico on Monday that he worked on three illegal deportation cases between 2008 and 2025. Now, his firm gets three such cases every month. Since Trump took office in January 2025, Politico found that the administration has deported more than 170 people “in violation of court orders,” “in defiance of legally mandated due process protections,” or “to countries from which they had sought or received protection from torture and persecution.”
This analysis builds on prior reporting showing the Trump administration’s flagrant disregard of court orders, especially in the immigration context. Lawfare, for example, maintains a nonexhaustive database of immigration habeas cases, and identified at least 11 instances between April 2025 and April 2026 in which the Trump administration deported someone in violation of a court order. In February 2026, Minnesota federal district judges determined that the administration had violated at least 97 orders in 66 immigration cases within their district alone.
In an interview with NPR, Sandoval-Moshenberg expressed surprise at the willfulness of the Trump administration’s lawbreaking. “It used to be that when the government gets in trouble for doing something, they would at least tighten up and make an effort not to do it again,” he said. “That just doesn’t seem to be the case here.”
While other administrations may have been moved to modify their behavior by things like law or basic morality, the Trump administration requires a stronger incentive to abide by court rulings. In theory, violating court orders has consequences. Yet Trump has continuously flouted judges’ orders without experiencing meaningful repercussions. By permitting this, courts taught the Trump administration the wrong lesson: that it can keep breaking the law.
Courts have an array of options for punishing noncompliance and compelling the administration to follow court orders. The most glaringly underutilized tool judges have at their disposal is the power of contempt, which allows judges to compel testimony and to impose penalties like escalating fines or even imprisonment. Sometimes, the mere threat of contempt is sufficient to trigger remedial action: In January, for instance, after the administration failed to release a habeas petitioner from immigration detention as directed, a federal district court ordered the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to “appear personally before the Court and show cause why he should not be held in contempt.”
In its order, the court acknowledged that compelling an agency head to testify was “an extraordinary step,” but reasoned that “the extent of ICE’s violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary,” and that “lesser measures have been tried and failed.” Within hours, the government released the petitioner. Members of the Trump administration had no desire to follow the law, but they had even less desire to explain themselves under penalty of perjury.
In late February 2026, The New York Times published an analysis showing that federal judges had issued at least 35 orders since the previous August that required Trump administration attorneys or other officials to explain why they shouldn’t be held in contempt. And two federal judges in Minnesota did hold the administration in contempt that same month. That was a promising start, but follow-through remains rare. The administration needs to be convinced that the threat has teeth.
To be sure, contempt alone is not a surefire fix for the administration’s nonstop wrongdoing. But contempt remains a powerful tool that judges have been all too reluctant to use. The administration’s pattern of defying court orders, especially in immigration cases, is not only unlawful; it makes people unsafe. When the executive branch abandons any pretense of respect for people’s rights, it becomes even more important for the judiciary to enforce them.
