The Trump administration denied on Sunday that it had violated a court order by deporting hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a prison in El Salvador over the weekend, saying that the president had broad powers to quickly expel them under an 18th-century law meant for wartime.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, also asserted in a statement that the federal courts “have no jurisdiction” over the president’s conduct of foreign affairs or his power to expel foreign enemies.
“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil,” she said in a statement. It was unclear why she referred to an aircraft carrier, because all indications were that the Venezuelans had been flown to El Salvador.
While White House officials exulted over what they see as a precedent-setting victory in their efforts to speed up deportations, the comments also tacitly acknowledge that the court battles over their legal rationale may be just beginning.
President Trump signed an executive order on Friday invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to rapidly arrest and deport those the administration identifies as members of the Tren de Aragua gang without many of the legal processes common in immigration cases. The enemies law allows for summary deportations of people from countries at war with the United States.
On Saturday, Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court in Washington issued a temporary restraining order blocking the government from deporting any immigrants under the law after Mr. Trump’s order invoking it.
In a hastily scheduled hearing sought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the judge said he did not believe that federal law allowed the president’s action. He also ordered that any flights that had departed with Venezuelan immigrants under the executive order return to the United States “however that’s accomplished — whether turning around the plane or not.”
“This is something you need to make sure is complied with immediately,” he said.
Officials have not said when the deportation flights landed in El Salvador, but Ms. Leavitt insisted on Sunday that the migrants “had already been removed from U.S. territory” at the time of the judge’s order. She did not say whether the planes could have, as the judge ordered, turned around and returned to the United States.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, posted a three-minute video on social media of men in handcuffs being led off a plane during the night and marched into prison. The video also shows prison officials shaving the prisoners’ heads.
The Trump administration hopes that the unusual prisoner transfer deal — not a swap but an agreement for El Salvador to take those suspected of being gang members — will be the beginning of a larger effort to use the Alien Enemies Act.
That law, best known for its role in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, has been invoked three times in U.S. history — during the War of 1812 and both World Wars — according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy organization. American officials familiar with the deal said that the United States would pay El Salvador about $6 million to house the prisoners.
During the hearing on Saturday, Judge Boasberg said he was ordering the government to turn flights around given “information, unrebutted by the government, that flights are actively departing.”
A lawyer representing the government, Drew Ensign, told Judge Boasberg that he did not have many details to share, and that describing operational details would raise “national security issues.”
The timing of the flights to El Salvador is important because Judge Boasberg issued his order shortly before 7 p.m. in Washington, but video posted from El Salvador shows the deportees disembarking the plane at night. El Salvador is two time zones behind Washington, which raises questions about whether the Trump administration had ignored an explicit court order.
Judge Boasberg’s order to turn flights around came after he told the government earlier on Saturday not to deport five Venezuelan men who were the initial focus of the legal fight. The Trump administration is appealing the judge’s order.
In a court filing, the Trump administration said the Departments of State and Homeland Security were “promptly notified” of the judge’s written order when it was posted to the electronic docket at 7:26 p.m. on Saturday.
The administration said that the five plaintiffs who filed suit to block their deportations — the suit that yielded the judge’s first order on Saturday — had not been deported.
The filing added that “some gang members subject to removal” by the president’s decree “had already been removed” from U.S. territory before Judge Boasberg issued the second, broader order.
On Sunday, Mr. Bukele posted a screenshot on social media about Judge Boasberg’s order and wrote, “Oopsie… Too late.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio later shared Mr. Bukele’s post from his personal account.
Attorney General Pam Bondi criticized the judge on Saturday night in a statement, writing that he had sided with “terrorists over the safety of Americans,” and that his order “disregards well-established authority regarding President Trump’s power, and it puts the public and law enforcement at risk.”
On Sunday, the Venezuelan government denounced the transfer, saying that it flew in the face of U.S. and international laws and adding that the attempt to apply the Alien Enemies Act “constitutes a crime against humanity.”
The statement compared the transfer with “the darkest episodes of human history,” including slavery and Nazi concentration camps. In particular, Venezuela denounced what it called a threat to kidnap minors as young as 14 by labeling them as terrorists, claiming that the minors were “considered criminals simply for being Venezuelan.”
The government of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, has presented an obstacle to the Trump administration as it plans to step up deportations — and to target people suspected of being Tren de Aragua members — because for years it has not regularly accepted deportation flights. In recent weeks, Mr. Maduro has gone back and forth on whether his government would accept such flights with Venezuelans from United States.
As a result, the Trump administration has sought alternative destinations, including the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where it has sent some migrants, including those suspected of being gang members, though it has since removed them from the base.
In an unusual turn, El Salvador has presented Mr. Trump with another alternative.
In early February, while Mr. Rubio was visiting El Salvador, Mr. Bukele offered to take in deportees of any nationality, including convicted criminals, and jail them in part of El Salvador’s prison system, for a fee.
Mr. Rubio, who announced the offer at the time, said that Mr. Bukele had agreed to jail “any illegal alien in the United States who is a criminal of any nationality, whether from MS-13 or the Tren de Aragua.”
Officials from both the United States and El Salvador revealed that the deal with the Trump administration also included the transfer of suspected members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 who were being held in the United States awaiting charges.
“We have sent 2 dangerous top MS-13 leaders plus 21 of its most wanted back to face justice in El Salvador,” Mr. Rubio posted on social media on Sunday. Mr. Rubio added that “over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua” had also been sent to El Salvador, which “has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price.”
The two MS-13 men mentioned by Mr. Rubio were one accused of being a top leader, and one suspected of being a gang member.
The first, Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, was among 14 of the gang’s highest-ranking leaders who were charged on Long Island in 2020. He was arrested last year in Texas and has since been in U.S. custody awaiting trial.
The second, Cesar Eliseo Sorto-Amaya, was arrested in February on charges that he had entered the United States illegally — for the fourth time since 2015. He was wanted on double aggravated homicide charges in El Salvador, where he had been sentenced in absentia to 50 years in prison. The U.S. charges against both men were dismissed on Tuesday, according to court records that were unsealed on Sunday.
Prosecutors wrote to the judge in Mr. Lopez-Larios’s case that the U.S. government had decided that “sensitive and important foreign policy considerations outweigh the government’s interest in pursuing the prosecution of the defendant.”
The two men’s transfers have raised concerns among some U.S. law enforcement officials, who fear that those individuals, once out of U.S. custody, could escape or issue orders that may endanger witnesses in both countries, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Mr. Bukele came to power on promises to crack down on gang violence and MS-13. His success in restoring safety has won him broad support in El Salvador and around Latin America, but critics say that it has come at the cost of human rights.
By imposing a state of emergency, he has sidestepped due process and ordered sweeping arrests that have ensnared thousands of people without any affiliation to criminal groups, critics say. Under Mr. Bukele, the prison population has soared and abuses, including torture, have been documented in the system.
Mr. Bukele has promoted his iron-fisted approach by posting dramatic photographs from his country’s prisons that resemble those shared this weekend: They often feature scores of tattooed inmates with shaved heads held in handcuffs and forced into submissive poses.
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