A federal judge has scheduled a hearing at 5 p.m. ET Monday to address the question of whether the Trump administration knowingly violated a court order when it handed over more than 200 alleged gang members to El Salvadoran authorities over the weekend.
President Donald Trump’s administration made a calculated decision Saturday to ignore the judge’s directive to turn around two flights containing hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The verbal instructions from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg accompanied a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from deporting noncitizens currently in custody, which the judge issued less than two hours after Trump attempted to invoke the 18th century law to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Boasberg, in his order, explicitly told the government to turn around any aircraft that had already departed the country if they were still in the air. However, sources said top lawyers and officials in the administration made the determination that since the flights were over international waters, Boasberg’s order did not apply, and the planes were not turned around.
In a court filing late Sunday night, lawyers with the ACLU and Democracy Forward Foundation argued that the Trump administration may have committed a “blatant violation” of the court’s directive by acting as if the order only applied to flights in U.S. airspace and individuals on American soil.
“This Court orally and unambiguously directed the government to turn around any planes carrying individuals being removed pursuant to the AEA Proclamation,” the filing said.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice insisted in a court filing Sunday that they removed “gang members” pursuant to Trump’s Alien Enemies Act proclamation before the court issued its order.
However, lawyers representing some of the migrants argued that assertion not only conflicts with the timeline of events but also misconstrues when the United States loses jurisdiction of the noncitizens.
“Whether or not the planes had cleared U.S. territory, the U.S. retained custody at least until the planes landed and the individuals were turned over to foreign governments,” the plaintiffs’ filing said. “And the Court could not have been clearer that it was concerned with losing jurisdiction and authority to order the individuals returned if they were handed over to foreign governments, not with whether the planes had cleared U.S. territory or had even landed in another country.”
Plaintiffs’ attorneys said that based on publicly available information, it appears that two flights carrying migrants under the Alien Enemies Act landed after the court’s verbal and written orders. They added that “public comments made by Defendants and the President of El Salvador” boasting about the court being “too late” to stop the deportations reinforces concerns that the Trump administration may have violated the order.
“Defendants could have turned the plane around without handing over individuals subject to the Proclamation and this Court’s [Temporary Restraining Order],” the lawyers argued.
Finding the deportations would cause irreparable harm, Boasberg’s temporary restraining order on Saturday barred the Trump administration from deporting “all non-citizens who are subject to the AEA proclamation” for at least 14 days.
“You shall inform your clients of this immediately any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” Boasberg said during Saturday’s hearing. “However that’s accomplished, turning around the plane, or not embarking anyone on the plane. … This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”
Plaintiffs’ lawyers have asked Judge Boasberg to order the Trump administration to submit sworn declarations to determine whether the government knowingly violated his court order.
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