A federal judge on Monday gave the Trump administration a Tuesday deadline to provide details about plane loads of Venezuelans it deported despite orders not to, in a brewing showdown over presidential power.
According to Reuters, President Donald Trump claims the deported Venezuelans are members of the prison gang Tren de Aragua, which he designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation.
The White House on Saturday published a Trump proclamation that invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to declare the gang was conducting irregular warfare against the U.S.
Later on Saturday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued an order blocking the deportations, but the flights continued anyway and 261 people were flown to El Salvador.
A Trump administration lawyer argued both that the judge’s initial oral ruling to block the flights was superseded by a more sparsely written order issued later, and that the government had the legal right to continue with flights once they had left U.S. airspace.
During a court hearing on Monday, Boasberg repeatedly pressed the Justice Department attorney, Abhishek Kambli, to provide details on the timing of the flights that transported the Venezuelans to El Salvador, including whether they took off after his order was issued.
“Why are you showing up today without answers?” Boasberg asked.
The judge is trying to ascertain the exact timeline of events surrounding his rulings on Saturday, including when the flights took off and who was on them.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said 261 people were deported in total, including 137 who were removed under the Alien Enemies Act and more than 100 others who were removed via standard immigration proceedings. There were also 23 Salvadoran members of the MS-13 gang, she said.
She also said on X, “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 written order and the Administration’s actions do not conflict. Moreover, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear — federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over the President’s conduct of foreign affairs, his authorities under the Alien Enemies Act, and his core Article II powers to remove foreign alien terrorists from U.S. soil and repel a declared invasion.
“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrying foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil.”
