What happens if Trump continues to defy court orders?

President Donald Trump and his allies are in the middle of a weeks-long attempt to undermine the judges overseeing an avalanche of lawsuits against them. Judges who rule against him have been cast as corrupt, impeachable or criminal, and the president is incredulous that any federal judge could strike down a command from the executive branch as unconstitutional.

The administration has already repeatedly tested how far it can defy court orders, but a legal fight over the president’s authority to deport immigrants under a rarely used wartime law is steering the United States towards a dangerous constitutional crossroads, according to legal experts.

A timeline for those deportation flights and court orders is crucial to determine whether administration officials openly defied the judicial branch.

Officials could be held in contempt of court — an impeachable offense, according to Bruce Ackerman, Sterling professor of law and political science at Yale Law School and author of We the People, a multivolume series on the constitution.

Trump’s “assaults on the rule of law” could mean “we might well once again see an impeachment,” Ackerman told The Independent.

But nobody is certain what will happen next.

The administration is deploying a legal theory that would effectively grant the president limitless authority across the government and, by extension, over the courts, which have long acted as a critical check on the presidency.

“The unitary executive theory is really just a way to cloak the morphing of a democratically elected president into a dictator with the appearance of legality,” writes legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance.

“If presidents can do whatever they want, including putting people on a plane and sending them to prisons in a foreign country with no due process whatsoever, then really, who are we?” she wrote. “We are inevitably headed, whether it’s in this case or another, to a confrontation between a president who has rejected the rule of law and a judge sworn to enforce it. We are in an exceedingly dangerous moment for democracy.”

Last month, former Trump administration official Ty Cobb warned The Independent that it’s not a matter of whether the courts will do their job to reign in abuse under the administration, but whether they will have any effect on Trump.

“Unless and until the Supreme Court intervenes, because that’s the only court he seems to listen to,” Cobb told The Independent.

“And people should not expect that to slow down,” he said. “If anything, they should expect the next two years to be a frantic assault on the Constitution.”

Judges can issue criminal or civil contempt orders against relevant administration officials for violating court orders, according to Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.

“Whether this will work against an administration truly determined to resist to the max, is a difficult question,” Somin told The Independent. “I’d be lying if I said I know for sure how such a confrontation would end.”

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Less than a month into the administration, a federal judge accused the government of continuing to “improperly freeze federal funds” and refusing to “resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds” despite a “clear and unambiguous” order to do so.

Another federal judge has had to order administration officials to lift a freeze on USAID funding at least three times after the administration seemingly ignored them. And after the administration was ordered to restore funding to refugee resettlement groups, officials abruptly canceled their contracts altogether.

Other judges have accused officials with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency of trying to evade scrutiny by failing to answer who, exactly, is running it.

But the administration has turned to appeals courts and, in at least three cases, the Supreme Court, with Trump at one point saying his administration will “always” abide by court rulings as he challenges threats to his agenda.

The Trump administration is now suggesting it has broad authority under Article II of the Constitution, which covers the executive branch. In 2019, he claimed it gave him “the right to do whatever I want.”

Administration officials argue that Article II protects Trump’s actions — like sending immigrants to another country — against any court orders.

“These inherent Article II powers, especially when exercised outside the United States, are not subject to judicial review or intervention,” Department of Justice attorneys wrote March 17.

Three days earlier, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for the fourth time in U.S. history to deport Venezuelans “who are members” of Tren de Aragua and “are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States.”

The law was most recently invoked to forcibly relocate and detain Japanese Americans, including U.S. citizens, during the Second World War.

“This is war in many respects,” Trump said on Air Force One March 16. “It’s more dangerous than war because, you know, in war, they have uniforms.”

It’s a “flagrantly illegal” attempt “to dispense with due process,” according to Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel in the liberty and national security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.

“Tren de Aragua is a dangerous Venezuelan criminal gang, but immigration law already gives the president ample authority to deport Tren de Aragua members who inflict harm on our communities,” she said.

Instead, the president “has falsely proclaimed an invasion and predatory incursion to use a law written for wartime for peacetime immigration enforcement,” according to Ebright.

“The courts should shut this down,” she said. “If the courts allow it to stand, this move could pave the way for abuses against any group of immigrants the president decides to target — not just Venezuelans — even if they are lawfully present in the U.S. and have no criminal history.”

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On March 15, the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order to block removals under the Alien Enemies Act.

Barack Obama-appointed District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., scheduled a brief hearing at 5 p.m. that same day, then adjourned 20 minutes later to allow the administration to determine whether flights carrying anyone under the Alien Enemies Act are underway. The parties were due back in court at 6 p.m.

Then, at 5:26 p.m., one of two flights chartered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement departed Texas for Honduras, according to flight records reviewed by The Washington Post. Another flight followed at 5:45 p.m. bound for El Salvador.

Roughly one hour later, the judge — verbally — blocked Trump’s application of the Alien Enemies Act. His written order appeared on the docket at 7:26 p.m.

Neither of the planes had landed in El Salvador before the judge’s order.

And then a third flight left Texas for El Salvador 10 minutes later.

On Sunday morning, at 7:47 a.m. — more than 12 hours after the judge’s order from the bench and his written ruling — Bukele responded to news of the judge’s ruling with a post on social media: “Oopsie, too late.”

The message was shared by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Following Judge Baosberg’s order, attorney General Pam Bondi issued a press release accusing the judge of having “supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans.”

On social media, Justice Department chief of staff Chad Mizelle raged against an “unelected federal judge who has ‘hired’ more executive branch employees than President Trump.”

“This is a judicial power grab. Plain and simple,” he wrote.

Threats to the judge soon followed.

“The time has come,” wrote Trump ally and Article III Project founder Mike Davis. “Tell Congress to Impeach DC Obama Judge Jeb Boasberg for Keeping Terrorists in America.”

Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas said he plans to file articles of impeachment against Boasberg.

Moments before a hearing March 17 over questions about the deportation flights and whether administration officials ignored a court order, the Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to “immediately” remove the case from Boasberg’s courtroom.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and administration officials have insisted that the administration didn’t “refuse to comply” with the court’s order while at the same time admonished a district judge who, she claims, “cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil.”

“This is sophistry,” according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow with the American Immigration Council. “The judge’s authority bound the heads of the agency in Washington, D.C. He ordered them to turn around any planes in the air and not to deport them under the Alien Enemies Act. They refused. That’s contempt of court.”

“We are not stopping,” Trump’s border czar Tom Homan told Fox News. “I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks. We are coming.”

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In court, the Trump administration has argued that questions surrounding the timing of the flights and who was on the planes are sensitive national security matters, and that Trump was no longer in the court’s jurisdiction because the flights were in international waters, and that the judge’s verbal order didn’t carry the same weight as a written one.

Leavitt claimed to reporters March 17 that “there are actually questions about whether a verbal order carries the same weight as a written order” — arguments that a Justice Department attorney made a few hours later in court.

Judge Boasberg and legal experts were extremely skeptical.

There are several relatively recent precedents that suggest the president is on a “course that may well lead to his impeachment,” including states’ refusal to obey the Supreme Court’s order to desegregate schools in Brown v Board of Education, and Richard Nixon’s refusal to comply with subpoenas for incriminating evidence in the Watergate scandal, among the impeachable offenses against him, according to Ackerman.

There is also the landmark decision in 1832’s Worcester v Georgia, which laid the foundation for Native American sovereignty over their territory. The court ruled that the state could not interfere with the Cherokee Nation’s affairs and was entitled to federal protections.

But President Andrew Jackson virtually ignored the decision, reportedly responding with the apocryphal quote: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” Jackson ultimately commenced with the forced removal of Native Americans, resulting in the deaths of thousands.

“Are Trump's lawyers going to invoke the precedent of a death march?” Ackerman told The Independent. “Is that his precedent, or Brown v Board of Education, or is it Richard Nixon?”