President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice is working to fend off possible contempt in a case involving alleged Venezuelan gang members, a heated fight happening parallel to a broader court battle over whether the president has authority to deport them under a wartime law.

The possibility that Judge James Boasberg could hold Trump administration officials in contempt arose from the DOJ eschewing repeated orders from him. The DOJ’s actions have drawn criticism from legal experts, who say that dispute could detract from the related fight underway in the same case about Trump’s overarching deportation powers.

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