The Trump administration asked a federal appeals court late Wednesday to intervene after a lower court threatened to hold officials in criminal contempt over a controversial round of deportation flights to El Salvador in March.

Boasberg found the administration showed a "willful disregard" of order temporarily blocking its use of a 1789 wartime powers law.

A divided federal appeals court panel on Friday temporarily halted U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s contempt proceedings against the Trump administration over its deportation flights to