The Trump administration has asserted that it did not breach a court order when it declined to recall flights deporting Venezuelan migrants to a well-known terrorist prison in El Salvador. This was despite a judge’s explicit directive for the flights to return. The deportations were carried out with minimal due process, utilizing President Donald Trump’s unprecedented invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA).

In a five-page court document released on Tuesday, the administration defended its actions. The document disclosed that Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, ultimately decided to ignore Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s verbal order issued in March. This filing is part of Boasberg’s ongoing investigation into whether the administration might face criminal contempt charges for not complying with his directive.

The administration’s main argument is that Judge Boasberg’s verbal order on March 15, which instructed that the deportees “be returned to the United States,” was later “superseded” by a written order issued shortly after. This written order only prohibited the administration from “removing” migrants under the AEA. Since the flights had already exited U.S. airspace, officials interpreted this as the detainees having already “been removed” from the country, allowing their transfer to El Salvador’s custody.

The court filing details how Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign quickly communicated both the verbal and written orders from Boasberg to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and then-Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove. Both Blanche and Bove had previously served as personal attorneys for Trump. Notably, Bove has since been appointed as a federal appellate judge.

Blanche and Bove offered legal counsel about the flights that had already departed to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through its acting general counsel, Joseph Mazzara. Mazzara then relayed this advice, along with his own, to Noem. She subsequently decided that the AEA detainees, who were removed from the U.S. prior to the court’s order, could be handed over to El Salvador.

The justification for Noem’s decision, per Tuesday’s filing, is that the judge’s verbal directive was not a binding order.

“That decision was lawful and was consistent with a reasonable interpretation of the Court’s order,” Tiberius Davis, counsel to the assistant attorney general, wrote in the filing. “Although the substance of the legal advice given to DHS and Secretary Noem is privileged, the Government has repeatedly explained in its briefs — both in this Court and on appeal — why its actions did not violate the Court’s order, much less constitute contempt. Specifically, the Court’s written order did not purport to require the return of detainees who had already been removed, and the earlier oral directive was not a binding injunction, especially after the written order.”

The administration also cited a recent appellate court concurrence to characterize Boasberg’s oral directives during the March 15 hearing as being “inconsistent, ‘garbled,’ and, if read in isolation, ‘indefensible.’”

“All of that confirms that it was appropriate to construe the written order as having superseded any oral directives, even assuming the latter ‘can ever be binding,’” the filing states.

Boasberg in April concluded there was probable cause “to find the Government in criminal contempt.” The judge appears ready to return to those proceedings after the D.C. Circuit lifted a monthslong hold on the case earlier this month.

Possible witnesses during the contempt proceedings include Bove, Ensign, and a former DOJ attorney who was fired after admitting in another high-profile immigration case that migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia was one of several men deported to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”