James Ho Knocks Trial Judge Who Blocked Venezuelan Deportations

Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho went after the power of district court judges in a new opinion, pointing to a ruling by the Supreme Court that shifted a high-profile dispute over the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members from Washington to Texas.

Ho, a President Donald Trump appointee, authored an opinion Thursday night that granted a writ of mandamus in a Middle District of Louisiana case that challenged a Louisiana execution method, instructing the district judge to vacate her order that reopened the litigation three years after it was dismissed. Ho was joined another Trump appointee, Judge Andrew Oldham, while George W. Bush appointee Judge Catharina Haynes dissented.

In a concurring opinion, Ho wrote that the case was “not the first time our court has had to step in because a district court abused its powers.”

Ho noted that Haynes argued in her dissent that the normal appellate process should play out.

“But that’s cold comfort to the millions of voters who took the time to participate in the democratic process, only to see their legitimate efforts unlawfully undone by a single district judge,” Ho said. “If a district judge abuses the legal process in a hurried effort to thwart the lawful political choices of the electorate, appellate courts are well within their right to intervene and grant emergency relief.”

Ho pointed to the Supreme Court’s April 7 ruling that allowed Trump to resume deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members under a wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act. The divided court said Chief US District Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg in Washington went too far in blocking the deportations nationally, and that the Venezuelan men behind the lawsuit must go to court where they’re being detained, in Texas.

The Fifth Circuit, considered the most conservative federal appeals court in the US, would hear any appeal of a Texas’s judge’s ruling on the Venezuelan men detained in that state. Boasberg has separately said there’s “probable cause” to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt of court for sending Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador despite him ordering an immediate stop to the deportations.

“There (as here), a district court presumed to seize control over a case of profound public interest that it had no lawful business deciding, because it belonged in another court,” Ho wrote of the case before Boasberg. “So the Supreme Court intervened and took the case away from the district court.”

Ho said the Supreme Court’s majority “understood that waiting for an appeal in the ‘ordinary course’ would inadequately protect the government from the indignity of litigating in the wrong proceeding—not to mention unduly delay the expressed will of the people.”

“When a district judge acts hastily, yet appellate courts are told not to ‘rush in,’ that’s not a plea for judicial sobriety—it’s a recipe for district judge supremacy,” Ho added.

In her dissent, Haynes wrote that the state didn’t meet the high bar needed for a writ of mandamus. She also took issue with a statement in the majority opinion that accused the district of “manipulat[ing] the legal process in order to claim jurisdiction over an issue of great public interest that properly belongs in another court.”

“It levels this serious allegation without offering any support and despite neither party questioning the district judge’s integrity,” Haynes wrote of the order. “I would not cast aspersions on the intentions of the district judge in this case.”

Ho is a vocal judge and is viewed as a potential pick for the Supreme Court if a seat were to open during Trump’s second term.

Ho has been critical of district court judges before. He said last month that appellate courts should be prepared to rein in “off-track” trial court judges.

Ho said at another event in March that he believes there’s a double standard when it comes to judicial independence, after some spoke out against threats to judges who are presiding over high-profile challenges to the Trump administration. Ho pointed to judges in Florida and Texas, as well as conservative members of the Supreme Court, who faced threats before.

The case is In re: Gary Westcott, 5th Cir., No. 25-30088, 4/17/25.