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
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
The deportations to El Salvador came as US District Judge
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.”
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Trump
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
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
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Magan Crane, Meghashyam Mali
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