Top officials within the Justice Department, the State Department, and possibly even the White House may be barrelling toward a criminal conviction for contempt of court. It is far from clear, however, whether anything will happen to them even if they are convicted.

On Wednesday, Chief Judge James Boasberg determined that he has “probable cause” to conclude that the Trump administration officials who defied one of his orders — which required the administration to halt deportations under an illegal order invoking a wartime statute — should be held in contempt of court. (Contempt is a process used to punish people who violate court orders, sometimes with imprisonment.)

Boasberg’s order concludes that, unless the government provides due process to the people who were deported by allowing them to challenge their deportation in federal court, he will identify the officials responsible for this defiance and subject them to a criminal trial.

Boasberg’s original order halting these deportations was eventually vacated by five of the Supreme Court’s Republican justices, who argued that the plaintiffs in that case brought their lawsuit in the wrong court. But, as the Supreme Court said in United States v. United Mine Workers (1947), “a defendant may be punished for criminal contempt for disobedience of an order later set aside on appeal.”

As Boasberg lays out in his Wednesday opinion, the Trump administration defied his original order by flying many individuals to El Salvador and turning them over to Salvadorian officials, who placed them in a notorious prison, even after Boasberg ordered these deportations to be halted and any planes that were still on their way to El Salvador to be turned around.

It’s unlikely that Boasberg will be the last judge to consider contempt charges against this administration. Judge Paula Xinis, the judge overseeing the high-profile case about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador in........

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