The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador despite a federal judge’s temporary order prohibiting deportations under an 18th-century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air when the ruling was issued.
U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an order Saturday temporarily halting the deportations, but lawyers informed him that two planes carrying immigrants were already in the air, one bound for El Salvador and the other for Honduras.
Boasberg verbally ordered that the planes be turned around, but they were not, and he did not include the directive in his written order.
In a statement issued Sunday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to speculation that the administration was violating court orders, saying, “The administration did not’refuse to comply’ with a court order.” The order, which had no legal basis, came after terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from US territory.”
The acronym refers to the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump targeted in his unusual proclamation issued 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. It is not overturned.
Trump’s allies were overjoyed with the results.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who agreed to house 300 immigrants for a year at a cost of $6 million in his country’s prisons, wrote on social media site X, “Oopsie…Too late,” above an article about Boasberg’s ruling. Steven Cheung, White House communications director, recirculated that post.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who previously negotiated a deal with Bukele to house immigrants, wrote 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.”
According to Steve Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, Boasberg’s verbal directive to turn around the planes was not technically part of his final order, but the Trump administration clearly violated its “spirit”.
“This just incentivizes future courts to be hyper specific in their orders and not give the government any wiggle room,” Vladeck told reporters.
The immigrants were deported following Trump’s enactment of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has only been used three times in US history.
The law, which was used during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II, requires a president to declare the United States at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who would otherwise be protected under immigration or criminal laws. It was last used to justify the internment of Japanese-American civilians during WWII.
Venezuela’s government issued a statement on Sunday rejecting the use of Trump’s declaration of the law, describing it as evocative of “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of Nazi concentration camps.”
Tren de Aragua began in an infamously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua and followed an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the vast majority of whom were looking for better living conditions after their country’s economy collapsed over the last decade.
During his campaign, Trump used the gang to paint a false picture of communities that he claimed had been “taken over” by a small group of criminals.
The Trump administration has not identified the deported immigrants, provided any evidence that they are Tren de Aragua members, or charged them with any crimes in the United States. It also sent two top members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang to El Salvador after they were arrested in the United States.
El Salvador’s government released video on Sunday showing men exiting planes onto an airport tarmac surrounded by riot police officers. The men, with their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down, forcing them to bend at the waist.
The video also showed the men being driven to prison in a large convoy of buses guarded by police, military vehicles, and at least one helicopter.
The men were shown kneeling on the ground while having their heads shaved before changing into the prison’s all-white uniform — knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks, and rubber clogs — and being placed in cells.
The immigrants were taken to the notorious CECOT facility, the centerpiece of Bukele’s push to pacify his once-violent country through strict police measures and limitations on basic rights.
The Trump administration stated that the president signed the proclamation claiming Tren de Aragua was invading the United States on Friday night but did not announce it until Saturday afternoon.
Immigration lawyers reported late Friday that Venezuelans who could not be deported under immigration law were being moved to Texas for deportation flights. They began filing lawsuits to stop the transfers.
“Basically, any Venezuelan citizen in the US may be removed on the pretext of belonging to Tren de Aragua, with no chance of defense,” Adam Isaacson of the Washington Office for Latin America, a human rights organization, warned on X.
The litigation that resulted in the deportation halt was filed on behalf of five Venezuelans detained in Texas, whose lawyers expressed concern that they would be falsely accused of being gang members. They warned that if the act is invoked, Trump could simply declare anyone a Tren de Aragua member and remove them from the country.
When the suit was filed Saturday morning, Boasberg barred those Venezuelans from being deported, but after his afternoon hearing, he only expanded it to include all people in federal custody who could be targeted by the act.
He pointed out that the law had never been used outside of a congressionally declared war, and that plaintiffs could successfully argue that Trump exceeded his legal authority by invoking it.
The deportation moratorium lasts up to 14 days, and the immigrants will remain in federal custody during that time. Boasberg has scheduled a hearing on Friday to hear additional arguments in the case.
He claimed he had to act because immigrants whose deportations may violate the US Constitution deserved to have their cases heard in court.
“Once they are out of the country,” Boasberg told me, “there is little I could do.”
