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(CNN) — A divided federal appeals court has maintained a temporary block on President Donald Trump’s ability to use the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang.

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled 2-1 on Wednesday that a pair of lower-court orders blocking Trump’s use of the sweeping wartime authority can stand while a legal challenge to the president’s invocation of the law plays out.

US District Judge James Boasberg’s orders blocking use of the Alien Enemies Act for deportations has been at the center of an escalating political and legal controversy since they were issued on the evening of March 15. Two flights of people being deported under the act took off during an emergency hearing and did not turn around, leading to ongoing questions of whether Boasberg’s court order was intentionally ignored.

Since then, the Justice Department and Boasberg have gone back and forth over DOJ’s refusal to provide more information about the flights, and Trump suggested Boasberg should be impeached. That led to a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts.

Trump had invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which gives the president tremendous authority to target and remove undocumented immigrants, to speed up the deportations of migrants the government has accused of being members of the gang, Tren de Aragua. The law is designed to be invoked if the US is at war with another country, or a foreign nation has invaded the US or threatened to do so.

Wednesday’s appeals court ruling was unsigned. But Judges Patricia Millett, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and Karen Henderson, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, wrote lengthy opinions explaining why they agreed with the court’s decision.

Henderson leaned into the argument that allowing Trump to use the law – even as the case proceeded – “risks exiling plaintiffs to a land that is not their country of origin” where they could face torture in notorious prisons.

“Indeed, at oral argument before this Court, the government in no uncertain terms conveyed that – were the injunction lifted – it would immediately begin deporting plaintiffs without notice,” Henderson wrote. “Plaintiffs allege that the government has renditioned innocent foreign nationals in its pursuit against TdA. For example, one plaintiff alleges that he suffered brutal torture with ‘electric shocks and suffocation’ for demonstrating against the Venezuelan regime.”

Judge Justin Walker, who was named to the bench by Trump during his first term, dissented, focusing on a technical issue he raised during the oral arguments in the case. Walker said the claims filed by those deported needed to go to a court in Texas rather than in Washington, DC.

The Trump administration, he said, had shown “that the district court’s orders threaten irreparable harm to delicate negotiations with foreign powers on matters concerning national security.”

And that harm, Walker said, “plus the asserted public interest in swiftly removing dangerous aliens,” outweighs the plaintiffs’ desire to file the suit in Washington.

The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling to the US Supreme Court.

The Justice Department appealed Boasberg’s orders during a very early stage of the litigation, and it’s likely that the case will arrive back at the DC Circuit in coming weeks after the judge issues a more thorough decision on the merits of Trump’s use of the wartime law for these deportations.

Millett seemed especially focused on the case’s posture as she explained why she wanted to keep the orders at issue intact.

“The district court has been handling this matter with great expedition and circumspection, and its orders do nothing more than freeze the status quo until weighty and unprecedented legal issues can be addressed through a soon-forthcoming preliminary injunction proceeding,” she wrote.

Siding with the administration at this juncture, Millett said, would “moot the Plaintiffs’ claims by immediately removing them beyond the reach of their lawyers or the court.”

Millett was also critical of the Trump administration’s argument that it did not violate Boasberg’s order from the bench earlier this month to immediately turn around any planes carrying migrants being deported under the Alien Enemies Act. DOJ attorneys have told Boasberg that his oral command “did not amount to a binding injunction” and that a written order he issued shortly after the proceedings is the controlling ruling in the matter.

That written order contained no such language about the planes and instead just said the administration was enjoined from removing the migrants subject to Trump’s proclamation invoking the law while the judge’s temporary restraining orders remained in effect.

“I leave the merits of that argument for the district court to resolve in the first instance,” Millett wrote. “But the one thing that is not tolerable is for the government to seek from this court a stay of an order that the government at the very same time is telling the district court is not an order with which compliance was ever required.”

“Heads the government wins, tails the district court loses is no way to obtain the exceptional relief of a TRO stay,” she added.

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN’s John Fritze contributed to this report.

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