--- title: Trump Calls for Judge in Deportations Case to Be Impeached description: Trump's latest attack on the judiciary prompted a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts. canonical: https://time.com/7269156/trump-judge-boasberg-impeach/ author: Brian Bennett article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-03-18T15:40:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2025-03-18T19:33:53.000Z article:section: Politics og:title: Trump Calls for Judge in Deportations Case to Be Impeached og:description: Trump's latest attack on the judiciary prompted a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts. og:url: https://time.com/7269156/trump-judge-boasberg-impeach/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7fcfa1ed929cf376/6998c4fb1f670982a1f56327/GettyImages-2205126566.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: President Trump Speaks At The Department Of Justice og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump Calls for Judge in Deportations Case to Be Impeached twitter:description: Trump's latest attack on the judiciary prompted a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7fcfa1ed929cf376/6998c4fb1f670982a1f56327/GettyImages-2205126566.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Trump Calls for Judge in Deportations Case to Be Impeached, Drawing Rare Rebuke From Roberts > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME. Updated: Mar 18, 2025 7:33 PM UTCPublished: Mar 18, 2025 3:40 PM UTC  President Donald Trump speaks at the Justice Department in Washington, DC on March 14, 2025. President Donald Trump speaks at the Justice Department in Washington, DC on March 14, 2025. Andrew Harnik—Getty Images  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME. Updated: Mar 18, 2025 7:33 PM UTCPublished: Mar 18, 2025 3:40 PM UTC 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. Trump’s brazen assault on the judicial branch drew an unusual rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. 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. 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!!!” Within hours of Trump's post, Roberts issued a rare public criticism of a sitting President. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts wrote in a statement, according to the AP. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.” Roberts has previously warned of the problem of judges facing threats and intimidation, including writing about the issue in his year-end report in December. “Attempts to intimidate judges for their rulings in cases are inappropriate and should be vigorously opposed,” Roberts wrote. 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,](https://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/content/chief-judge-james-e-boasberg) 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](https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/reports/handbooks-manuals/a-journalists-guide-federal-courts/judges-and-judicial-administration-journalists-guide#:~:text=Only%20Congress%20has%20the%20authority,only%20eight%20have%20been%20convicted.) 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\. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7269156/trump-judge-boasberg-impeach/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7269156/trump-judge-boasberg-impeach/"},"headline":"Trump Calls for Judge in Deportations Case to Be Impeached, Drawing Rare Rebuke From Roberts","datePublished":"2025-03-18T15:40:27.000Z","dateModified":"2025-03-18T19:33:53.000Z","description":"Trump also mocked the idea that a federal judge could constrain him.","url":"https://time.com/7269156/trump-judge-boasberg-impeach/","keywords":["Donald Trump"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7fcfa1ed929cf376/6998c4fb1f670982a1f56327/GettyImages-2205126566.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Brian Bennett","jobTitle":"Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7fcfa1ed929cf376/6998c4fb1f670982a1f56327/GettyImages-2205126566.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"President Trump Speaks At The Department Of Justice","caption":"President Trump Speaks At The Department Of Justice","creditText":"Andrew Harnik—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/donald-trump/","name":"Donald Trump"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7269156/trump-judge-boasberg-impeach/","name":"Trump Calls for Judge in Deportations Case to Be Impeached, Drawing Rare Rebuke From Roberts"}}]}] ```