White House Defends Expelling Hundreds Despite Court Order

The Trump administration Monday insisted it had not violated a court order by expelling hundreds of alleged members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang to El Salvador for imprisonment, even as a federal judge ordered a halt to some deportations.

“The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from US territory,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X. “The written order and the Administration’s actions do not conflict.”

Leavitt asserted that the president has a constitutional authority to conduct foreign affairs and to “remove foreign alien terrorists from US soil and repel a declared invasion.”

Under an agreement Secretary of State Marco Rubio brokered with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, 238 members of the gang were transferred to a terrorism confinement center over the weekend, Bukele said on X.

The precise timing of the transfers wasn’t immediately clear. The US also has not publicly detailed how it identified the Venezuelans as members of the Tren de Aragua gang that’s been designated a foreign terrorist organization.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump moved to accelerate deportations by invoking seldom-used powers under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a statute previously employed to justify the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

The deportations to El Salvador came as US District Judge James Boasberg barred removals under Trump’s proclamation for 14 days, allowing time to consider a legal challenge to the move brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward. In proceedings Saturday, Boasberg said any flights carrying people deported under Trump’s proclamation would have to be returned midair to the US, according to the Associated Press.

In her post, Leavitt suggested the order was invalid regardless of when the planes took off and landed.

“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrying foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from US soil,” she wrote.

Trump, asked Sunday aboard Air Force One if the administration violated Boasberg’s order, responded, “I don’t know. You have to speak with the lawyers.”

Trump told reporters the deportees are a “bad group of, as I say, hombres,” justifying his decision to invoke a wartime legal provision by saying the migrants “invaded our country” and “in that sense, this is war.”

Read more: Judge Halts Trump Wartime Powers Plan to Speed Deportations

Trump rooted his proclamation in assertions that many of the organization’s members “have unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions” against the country.

The president proclamation states Tren de Aragua is engaging in “mass illegal migration to the United States” in a bid to harm the country’s citizens, undermine public safety and support efforts by Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro to destabilize democratic nations.

In this photo released by the El Salvador Presidency, buses with deported individuals arrive at the Terrorism Containment Center (CECOT) maximum security prison on March 16.

Source: El Salvador Presidency

Trump in his second term has moved to ramp up deportations of undocumented migrants and secure US borders in the wake of an election victory driven partly by voter anxiety over illegal immigration and crime. As in Trump’s first term, courts across the US have slowed or blocked his ability to fully enact his orders.

Under the Alien Enemies Act the president can detain and remove non-citizens of hostile nations in wartime, powers which have been tapped rarely in US history. Opponents argue the authority cannot be used to target members of a criminal enterprise, rather than a country.

The administration asserted in a court filing that some of the deportations happened before the judge’s order. The administration also said it won’t pursue any more removals under the proclamation unless the court intervenes or removes the restraining order.

Five individuals who were subject to an earlier order blocking their removal are still in the US, the administration said in its filing.

The Venezuelan government posted on Telegram that the US proclamation “infamously and unfairly criminalizes” Venezuelan migrants, describing it as recalling “humanity’s most dark moments.”

--With assistance from Hadriana Lowenkron, Derek Wallbank and Stephanie Lai.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Jennifer A. Dlouhy in Washington at jdlouhy1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Justin Sink at jsink1@bloomberg.net

Magan Crane, Meghashyam Mali

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