Associated Press
President Donald Trump’s administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.
U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an order Saturday temporarily blocking the deportations, but lawyers told him there were already two planes with immigrants in the air — one headed for El Salvador, the other for Honduras. Boasberg verbally ordered the planes be turned around, but they apparently were not and he did not include the directive in his written order.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a statement Sunday, responded to speculation about whether the administration was flouting court orders: “The administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order. The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory.”
The acronym refers to the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump targeted in his unusual proclamation that was released Saturday
In a court filing Sunday, the Department of Justice, which has appealed Boasberg’s decision, said it would not use the Trump proclamation he blocked for further deportations if his decision is not overturned.
Trump sidestepped a question over whether his administration violated a court order while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening.
“I don’t know. You have to speak to the lawyers about that,” he said, although he defended the deportations. “I can tell you this. These were bad people.”
Asked about invoking presidential powers used in times of war, Trump said, “This is a time of war,” describing the influx of criminal migrants as “an invasion.”
Trump’s allies were gleeful over the results.
“Oopsie…Too late,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who agreed to house about 300 immigrants for a year at a cost of $6 million in his country’s prisons, wrote on the social media site X above an article about Boasberg’s ruling. That post was recirculated by White House communications director Steven Cheung.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who negotiated an earlier deal with Bukele to house immigrants, posted on the site: “We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars.”
Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that Boasberg’s verbal directive to turn around the planes was not technically part of his final order but that the Trump administration clearly violated the “spirit” of it.
“This just incentivizes future courts to be hyper specific in their orders and not give the government any wiggle room,” Vladeck said.
The immigrants were deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.
The law, invoked during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II, requires a President to declare the United States is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. It was last used to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.
Venezuela’s government in a statement Sunday rejected the use of Trump’s declaration of the law, characterizing it as evocative of “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.”
Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone during the past decade. Trump seized on the gang during his campaign to paint misleading pictures of communities that he contended were “taken over” by what were actually a handful of lawbreakers.
The Trump administration has not identified the immigrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the United States. It also sent two top members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang to El Salvador who had been arrested in the United States.
Video released by El Salvador’s government Sunday showed men exiting airplanes onto an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down to have them bend down at the waist.
The video also showed the men being transported to prison in a large convoy of buses guarded by police and military vehicles and at least one helicopter. The men were shown kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform — knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs — and placed in cells.
The immigrants were taken to the notorious CECOT facility, the centerpiece of Bukele’s push to pacify his once violence-wracked country through tough police measures and limits on basic rights
The Trump administration said the President actually signed the proclamation contending Tren de Aragua was invading the United States on Friday night but didn’t announce it until Saturday afternoon. Immigration lawyers said that, late Friday, they noticed Venezuelans who otherwise couldn’t be deported under immigration law being moved to Texas for deportation flights. They began to file lawsuits to halt the transfers.
“Basically any Venezuelan citizen in the US may be removed on pretext of belonging to Tren de Aragua, with no chance at defense,” Adam Isacson of the Washington Office for Latin America, a human rights group, warned on X.
The litigation that led to the hold on deportations was filed on behalf of five Venezuelans held in Texas who lawyers said were concerned they’d be falsely accused of being members of the gang. Once the act is invoked, they warned, Trump could simply declare anyone a Tren de Aragua member and remove them from the country.
Boasberg barred those Venezuelans’ deportations Saturday morning when the suit was filed, but only broadened it to all people in federal custody who could be targeted by the act after his afternoon hearing. He noted that the law has never before been used outside of a congressionally declared war and that plaintiffs may successfully argue Trump exceeded his legal authority in invoking it.
The bar on deportations stands for up to 14 days and the immigrants will remain in federal custody during that time. Boasberg has scheduled a hearing Friday to hear additional arguments in the case.
He said he had to act because the immigrants whose deportations may actually violate the U.S. Constitution deserved a chance to have their pleas heard in court.
“Once they’re out of the country,” Boasberg said, “there’s little I could do.”
___
Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
39 comments
KathrynA
March 17, 2025 at 8:24 am
The rule of law is gone and we are now in a dictatorship. If this is not changed, we no longer have a democracy governed by laws and Constitution.
Paul Passarelli
March 17, 2025 at 9:55 am
Are you really that ditsy?
martucci
March 17, 2025 at 6:42 pm
Enough of rogue judges protecting criminals, rapists and murderers. Empeach these judges.
Skeptic
March 17, 2025 at 7:42 pm
On what grounds? Oh, wait, in a country without laws, you don’t need any, am I right?
Michael K
March 17, 2025 at 8:41 am
No due process. No rule of law. No proof.
Who’s next?
Paul Passarelli
March 17, 2025 at 9:57 am
When ‘due process’ was perverted by insanity, you are correct, there was no due process.
This weekend, violent offenders were granted all the ‘due process’ that was necessary to remove them from the country.
PeterH
March 17, 2025 at 1:29 pm
So the ONLY EVIDENCE that these deported individuals were or are members of a criminal gang is solely privy to Donald Trump who has declared himself judge and jury!
Welcome to Nazi Germany 1933!
Oscar
March 17, 2025 at 3:30 pm
That is precisely what the Alien Enemy Act of 1798 says and the act predates the founding of the National Socialist Workers party by more than a century. Try a little education next time, before demonstrating your ignorance for all to see.
Skeptic
March 17, 2025 at 7:44 pm
Maybe you are the one displaying ignorance (again). Please cite the declaration of war that Congress passed which triggers the applicability of this law. Don’t worry, we will be here all week.
Michael K
March 17, 2025 at 3:38 pm
What is your proof?
There is no proof – none – and the number of people keeps changing.
Paul Passarelli
March 17, 2025 at 10:02 am
My concern with this story is the fees we paid. $6M for 300 prisoners for a year is $20,000 per year per prisoner.
While that might seem cheep compared to a US super-max prison, that’s ridiculously expensive for a third-world shit-hole.
Assuming that they are all kept in lockup for the duration, I suppose it’s OK. But I suggest that if any of the 300 appear again on US soil withing the time of their supposed confinement, they be shot on sight.
PeterH
March 17, 2025 at 1:48 pm
…..and please finish your thought Paul ….. tell us that you don’t care if they’re criminals, part of a criminal gang, or have convicted any crimes. Tell us you don’t care if innocent American civilians were rounded up….. that you simply don’t care.
Oscar
March 17, 2025 at 3:04 pm
Innocent American civilians?? You are a blithering idiot that lacks even a basic grasp of the facts. That’s patently obvious from the nonstop stream of idiocy you post.
Michael K
March 17, 2025 at 3:40 pm
Poore Miss Spoke: Do you not know that Green Card holders are legal US immigrants?
Oscar
March 17, 2025 at 4:17 pm
Green card holders are granted contingent permission to enter and remain in the US subject to compliance with numerous requirements including to not be a subversive acting against the security interests of the US or threaten against the territory of the US which is precisely what this third-rate chucklehead did. The Trump administration’s actions are 100% Constitutional. End of story.
ScienceBLVR
March 17, 2025 at 10:51 am
Oh Marco Marco, didn’t you used to be a lawyer?
Everytime you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face
Broken hands on broken ploughs
Broken treaties broken vows
Broken pipes broken tools
People bending broken rules
Hound dog howling bullfrog croaking
Everything is broken.
Skeptic
March 17, 2025 at 7:45 pm
Marco is Secretary of State in name only — seldom in the room where it happens — that is reserved for the cronies.
PeterH
March 17, 2025 at 12:51 pm
Dick Cheney’s “unitary executive” and the complicit Supreme Court under John Roberts and House and Senate Republicans have enabled Trump to act above the law. The USA is sailing through troubled waters reminiscent of 1933 Nazi Germany.
Oscar
March 17, 2025 at 2:57 pm
Radical leftist judges are creating challenges to the U.S. Constitution’s system of checks and balances and the independence of the executive branch of government. Time to restore the balance.
Skeptic
March 17, 2025 at 7:46 pm
Did you mean the independence of the judiciary? Was that not in the box of Cracker Jack that you pulled your law license from?
Oscar
March 17, 2025 at 3:01 pm
In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly and unambiguously ruled that “The Alien Enemy Act precludes judicial review of the removal order”. What part of this do anarchical progressive leftwing judges clearly acting ultra vires fail to understand?
Michael K
March 17, 2025 at 3:46 pm
In 2025, with which country did the US Congress declare war?
Whichever country it is, it’s news to me.
Oscar
March 17, 2025 at 4:25 pm
Per the Alien Enemy Act of 1798 presidential proclamation by Trump, which the US Supreme Court has determined “are matters of political judgment for which judges have neither technical competence nor official responsibility.” The War Powers Act was enacted in 1973 and did nothing to alter the application of the Alien Enemy Act of 1798.
Wendy
March 17, 2025 at 4:55 pm
Boom! Take that Michael K!
Skeptic
March 17, 2025 at 7:49 pm
So, the Congress declared war on the world in 1973 and the rest of us did not notice? Only the Trumpers? I suppose there is an originalist argument in there somewhere . . .
Michael K
March 17, 2025 at 5:46 pm
So, we are at war with what country? Please explain. What war has been declared? Simple question.
Oscar
March 17, 2025 at 7:24 pm
I know being a radical leftwing progressive is mentally debilitating, but do try to keep up. Neither actual war nor a declaration of war is a prerequisite to deporting someone pursuant to the Alien Enemy Act of 1798.
Skeptic
March 17, 2025 at 8:09 pm
Consider reading 50 U.S.C.3 Section 21 (if you learned how; I understand that many MAGAs are only able to watch TV or social media).
Oscar
March 18, 2025 at 9:50 am
Keep trying. Are you too ignorant to realize that is merely the codification of the Alien Enemy Act of 1798?
‘Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, OR any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, AND the President makes public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.
Skeptic
March 18, 2025 at 11:02 am
Thanks for the insightful comment. As you may not be aware, the United States Code is the controlling authority and is sited in court cases — many laws are amended over the years (see., e.g., the Securities Act of 1933, as amended) and the USC is the updated compendium of current law.
Otherwise I commend your highlighting of the Boolean algebraic terms — it makes it easier for those with average and above reading comprehension skills to understand that you are agreeing with my point.
1) When was war between the United States and any foreign nation or government declared (see Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution)?
2) What foreign nation or government perpetrated, attempted, or threatened any invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States?
3) When did Agent Orange make a public proclamation of either 1) or 2)?
Since none of 1, 2 or 3 occurred, the invocation of this section of the U.S. Code (and its antecedent Act) are clearly erroneous. All U.S. patriots support the review of the interpretation and application of federal laws since Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Of course, not all residents of the U.S. are patriots and many are permitted to espouse other points of view.
Skeptic
March 18, 2025 at 11:03 am
Thank you for proving my point
Michael K
March 17, 2025 at 9:53 pm
Bullcrap.
Oscar
March 18, 2025 at 12:31 pm
Michael K and Skeptic are simply too ignorant to even bother engaging with. Clearly both are low functioning products of third-rate agitprop and radical leftwing idiocy.
Skeptic
March 18, 2025 at 6:55 pm
Thanks Oscar. I’m sorry you can’t engage with the argument — too many big words. Educational standards in this state have radically declined since I was a youngster. The right wing (not the imaginary radical left) of the Supreme Court has made noise for years about following the clear text of statutes. But to understand the clear text, I guess you need a minimal level of reading comprehension. Adult education — it is never too late.
Skeptic
March 17, 2025 at 7:57 pm
Reading is fundamental. No wonder MAGA mental midgets want to abolish education. Read along with me: An Act Respecting Alien Enemies (1798) Section 1. “whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government, and the President of the United States shall make public proclamation of the event, . . .”
1) When was war declared (remember Congress cannot delegate its powers, the Supreme Courts said as much at MAGA urging last term)?
2) What foreign nation or government perpetrated, attempted, or threatened any invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States?
3) When did Agent Orange make a public proclamation of either 1) or 2)?
So, I guess the fake justification for the obvious constitutional violations by this executive has no basis in law. Go back to your shows — they need the ratings.
Oscar
March 21, 2025 at 9:13 pm
Statutory interpretation is not your strength, micro brain. What part of OR do you not understand? Better yet, try to read and even understand the contemporaneous legislative history to actually understand the basis for and historical context of the Act. Poor quality gene pool I guess.
Oscar
March 21, 2025 at 9:18 pm
BTW it is ‘cited’ not ‘sited’, nimrod.
Michael K
March 17, 2025 at 9:52 pm
You have no idea what you are talking about. Learn to read.
Oscar
March 21, 2025 at 9:16 pm
Still more mindless copy paste from an intellectually stunted leftist doubling down on stupid.
Comments are closed.