Chief Justice Roberts Issues Rare Statement After Trump Calls for Judge’s Impeachment

Trump earlier called for the impeachment of a judge who blocked the president’s proclamation seeking to deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang.

(L–R) Chief Justice John Roberts, Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan, and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh attend President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on March 4, 2025. Win McNamee/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare public statement on March 18, appearing to counter President Donald Trump’s call to impeach a federal judge who blocked deportations of members of a Venezuelan gang implemented under a presidential proclamation.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a statement provided to The Epoch Times. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

The statement from Roberts followed Trump’s post on Truth Social stating that U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, should be impeached.

Trump said that the judge “was not elected President.”

“We don’t want vicious, violent, and demented criminals, many of them deranged murderers, in our country,” the president wrote, in capital letters.

Roberts’s statement underscored tension between the executive and judicial branches of the federal government as the administration fends off dozens of lawsuits in federal courts. In many of those cases, district court judges have responded with injunctions—sometimes nationwide in scope—provoking criticism from the administration.

Elon Musk, who directs the Department of Government Efficiency, has been critical of judicial decision-making that blocked or slowed the enforcement of the administration’s policies. On Feb. 25, Musk stated on his social media platform X that “the only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges.”

Trump’s Truth Social post followed Boasberg’s March 17 hearing in which he requested more information related to the administration’s deportations and whether they complied with his prior order.

In court, Boasberg seemed incredulous that the administration was taking only his written order as official, but not an oral order that he issued earlier, and that had a broader scope.

“That’s a heck of a stretch,” he said, referring to the idea that the administration could disregard his oral order. He and a government lawyer also appeared to disagree on whether the judge’s powers extended beyond U.S. airspace.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) had filed a motion to avoid the hearing altogether, but Boasberg denied it. In its motion, the DOJ said Boasberg should “de-escalate the grave incursions on Executive Branch authority that have already arisen.” The DOJ also filed a motion to vacate Boasberg’s order and appealed it to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

While Trump has praised the high court’s justices, he has also said the high court “really let us down” after it declined to take up a 2020 election-related case from Texas.

In 2018, after Trump criticized a judge who ruled against his border asylum policy, Roberts said: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.

“What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

At the end of 2024, Roberts also released a report in which he warned about threats to judicial independence—specifically through violence, intimidation, disinformation, and threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.