Trump administration deports hundreds of alleged gang members to El Salvador despite court ruling

(CNN) — Hundreds of mostly Venezuelan alleged gang members were deported from the United States to a prison in El Salvador on Sunday, with the Trump administration invoking wartime powers to speed up removals despite a court ruling halting the move.

In the latest dramatic showdown between the White House and the judiciary, a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration’s ability to use the centuries-old Alien Enemies Act on Saturday evening, and verbally ordered any planes in the air carrying some of those migrants to turn back to the US.

US District Judge James Boasberg said the temporary restraining order will remain in effect for 14 days “or until further order of the court.” One person familiar with the matter said the planes were already in the air at the time of the judge’s ruling.

“Particularly given the plaintiffs’ information, unrebutted by the government, that flights are actively departing and planning to depart, I do not believe that I’m able to wait any longer,” said US District Judge James Boasberg during the hearing. “Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States.”

But on Sunday night, President Donald Trump defended his use of the Act, telling reporters on board Air Force One: “I can tell you this, these were bad people. That was a bad group of, as I say, hombres.”

Previous use of the Aliens Enemies Act has taken place during times of war, but Trump argued that “this was a time of war” and an “invasion” of migrants and criminals – repeating his past claims about the Biden administration’s handling of immigration.

When asked whether his government had violated the judge’s order, Trump replied: “You’d have to speak to the lawyers about that.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also said Sunday that the administration did not violate the judge’s order because it was issued after the migrants in question had left the US.

“The Administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order. The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist (Tren de Aragua) aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory,” Leavitt said in a statement, insisting there was no conflict between the administration’s actions and the written order.

“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 added.

Leavitt said earlier Sunday that at the president’s direction, the Department of Homeland Security had arrested nearly 300 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua over the weekend. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said that “hundreds of violent criminals were sent out of our country,” and thanked El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, for offering to imprison the deportees.

He added that Bukele had requested that two leaders of the MS-13 gang, as well as 21 other Salvadorans being held in the US be returned to “face justice in their homeland.”

Bukele announced on X Sunday morning that the alleged Tren de Aragua members have arrived in El Salvador and been transferred to the Center for Terrorism Confinement, or CECOT, “for a period of one year.” His post included video of men being led off of buses in handcuffs and having their heads shaved.

Trump, on Truth Social, thanked the Salvadorian leader for accepting the deportees hours later.

Cooperation between the two leaders has been a possibility for some time. CNN previously reported that Erik Prince, a Trump ally, has been in contact with Bukele since last year about accepting undocumented migrants from the US if Trump was elected.

The US will pay $6 million to El Salvador to house the deportees. The money, according to Bukele, will help sustain the penitentiary system, which currently costs $200 million annually. He added that the action will help law enforcement gather intelligence and apprehend more members of MS-13.

Bukele also appeared to make light of the incident early Sunday morning. Sharing a screenshot of an article about the Saturday ruling, he wrote on X, “Oopsie…too late.” Rubio later shared Bukele’s post on his own page.

Deportation flights weren’t in the air long before judges order

Boasberg had initially blocked the administration from deporting five individuals who challenged Trump’s use of the act. Following a hastily scheduled hearing hours later, Boasberg broadened that temporary block, granting a request from the plaintiffs’ lawyers to cover all noncitizens in US custody who would be subject to Trump’s proclamation.

Senior White House officials convened late Saturday with other administration officials to discuss how to proceed once Boasberg ruled that deportations under the Alien Enemies Act could not proceed, and ultimately determined not to order the deportation planes to turn around, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The planes had not been in the air very long when the judge issued his ruling, the person said.

Leavitt’s assertion that there was no conflict between the administration’s actions and the judge’s “written order” appears carefully crafted to exclude the judge’s directive that planes be turned around — which he issued verbally from the bench.

Verbal orders hold the same legal weight as written directives, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig told CNN’s Jessica Dean on “CNN Newsroom” Sunday. The big question, Honig explained, was where the planes were when the order was given.

“Could the judge have ordered them to turn around mid-flight while they had already left US territory? There’s at least some gray area there. There’s at least a fig leaf for the administration to use,” he added.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and other top DOJ officials argued in a Sunday afternoon filing that “some gang members” were deported between Boasberg’s two orders on Saturday after his Alien Enemies Act proclamation. They added that the five plaintiffs from the first order have not been removed.

Carl Tobias, a constitutional law professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said he believes it’s possible the Trump administration defied the court based on Boasberg’s statements on Saturday, though it is still unclear when exactly the planes took off.

If Boasberg determines that there was, in fact, a “clear violation” of his order, Tobias explained that the judge could issue a stricter order laying out how exactly the administration should be complying with his guidance. If the administration were to defy that order, violators could be held in either civil or criminal contempt, Tobias added.

While the Trump administration has threatened to defy court orders, Tobias said this case stands out due to its implications for the country’s standing on the world stage.

“This move, it seems to me, is one of the few orders that that does raise all kinds of questions about national security, as do some of the others, but also about how the United States conducts its business in the world, and so I think it is somewhat more far reaching,” Tobias explained, adding that Boasberg has demonstrated that he is “sensitive” to providing due process for the alleged criminals that have been deported.

GOP Sen. Mike Rounds said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he expects the executive branch is following the law, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper “we don’t know if that happened that way” when pressed on if he’s concerned that the Trump administration potentially violated the court order.

“I think most Americans are going to say, ‘I don’t care how old the law is, if you can use it to get these guys out and keep my family safe, we’re going to do it,’” the South Dakota Republican added.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday that Democrats “stand strongly in support of the rule of law” in reference to the judge’s order, and warned against the potential impacts of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation strategy.

“All of us within the Democratic Party, we oppose illegal immigration,” he said MSNBC. “But we also can’t go down this road that the Trump administration is taking us on and potentially deport American citizens, deport legal and lawful permanent residents and break up law abiding immigrant families who are contributing to this country.”

Cecot prison in El Salvador

With capacity for 40,000 inmates, Cecot is the largest prison in the Americas and a symbol of El Salvador’s brutal crackdown on crime.

It is also notorious for the ruthless way it has treated prisoners, which human rights organizations say is inhumane and violates human rights. Between 10,000 and 20,000 inmates have been locked up there. There is no privacy, comfort or any indication that the prisoners will ever be released.

CNN visited the prison late last year and saw inmates locked up in crowded cells, with some holding 80 people or so. They slept in metal bunks with no mattresses, sheets or pillows. They had an open toilet, a cement basin and plastic bucket for washing, and a large jug for drinking water. The men were inside these cells for 23½ hours a day. They had a 30-minute daily break to leave the cell for the central hallway for group exercise or Bible readings.

Critics have also pointed out that under the nationwide crackdown on crime in El Salvador, some constitutional rights like due process have been suspended. More than 80,000 people have been arrested throughout the country, accounting for more than 1% of the Salvadoran population. Bukele has admitted that some innocent people have been detained by mistake and that several thousand of them have already been released. He and many of his supporters argue that such collateral damage is part of the difficult process of transforming the country from being the “murder capital of the world” to one of the safest.

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report.

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