The Trump administration has sent hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador, even as a federal judge issued a temporary order preventing deportations under an 18th-century wartime declaration aimed at Venezuelan gang members, officials reported on Sunday. Flights were already en route when the ruling was announced.
U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an order on Saturday to block the deportations temporarily; however, lawyers informed him that two planes with immigrants were already airborne — one bound for El Salvador and the other for Honduras. Boasberg verbally instructed that the planes be turned back, but it seems this was not executed, and he omitted this directive from his written order.
In a statement on Sunday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed concerns that the administration was ignoring court orders: “The administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order. The order, which lacked a lawful basis, was issued after the removal of terrorist TdA aliens from U.S. territory.”
The acronym refers to the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump targeted in his unusual proclamation released on Saturday.
In a court filing on Sunday, the Department of Justice, which has appealed Boasberg’s ruling, mentioned that it would refrain from using the Trump proclamation he blocked for further deportations if his decision is not overturned.
Trump’s allies expressed delight over the outcome.
“Oopsie…Too late,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele remarked on social media, having agreed to accommodate approximately 300 immigrants in his country’s prisons for a year at a cost of $6 million. Bukele shared this sentiment above an article about Boasberg’s ruling, which was then recirculated by White House communications director Steven Cheung.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had previously negotiated a deal with Bukele to house immigrants, shared on X: “We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua, which El Salvador has consented to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars.”
Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown University Law Center professor, noted that Boasberg’s verbal directive to turn the planes around was not technically part of his final order, yet the Trump administration clearly disregarded the “spirit” of it.
“This just incentivizes future courts to be hyper-specific in their orders and not provide the government any leeway,” Vladeck stated.
The immigrants were deported following Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been utilized only three times in U.S. history.
This law, which was invoked during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II, mandates that a president declare the United States is at war, thereby granting extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who would otherwise be protected under immigration or criminal law. It was last used to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.
Venezuela’s government condemned Trump’s use of the law in a statement on Sunday, calling it reminiscent of “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the terror of Nazi concentration camps.”
Tren de Aragua emerged from a notoriously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua, coinciding with the exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the vast majority of whom were fleeing dire living conditions caused by their nation’s economic collapse over the past decade. Trump leveraged the gang’s notoriety during his campaign to create misleading narratives about communities that he claimed were “overtaken” by what were, in reality, just a few lawbreakers.
The Trump administration has not disclosed the identities of the deported immigrants, nor provided any evidence that they belong to Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the United States. It also deported two high-ranking members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang who had been apprehended in the U.S.
Video footage released by the Salvadoran government on Sunday depicted men disembarking from planes onto an airport tarmac, flanked by officers in riot gear. The individuals, with restrained hands and ankles, struggled to walk as officers forced them to bow their heads.
Additional footage showed the men being transported in a large convoy of buses, escorted by police and military vehicles, including at least one helicopter. The men were filmed kneeling as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniforms — knee-length shorts, T-shirts, socks, and rubber clogs — and were placed in cells.
The immigrants were taken to the infamous CECOT facility, the centerpiece of Bukele’s efforts to restore order in his formerly violent country through stringent police measures and curbs on basic rights.
The Trump administration indicated that the president signed the proclamation declaring Tren de Aragua was invading the United States on Friday night, but it was not announced until Saturday afternoon. Immigration attorneys reported noticing Venezuelans, who typically could not be deported under immigration law, being transferred to Texas for deportation flights late Friday, prompting them to file lawsuits to stop the transfers.
“Essentially, any Venezuelan citizen in the U.S. could be expelled on the basis of being linked to Tren de Aragua, without any chance for defense,” cautioned Adam Isacson of the Washington Office for Latin America, a human rights organization, on X.
The litigation leading to the temporary hold on deportations was initiated on behalf of five Venezuelans held in Texas who were apprehensive about being falsely labeled as members of the gang. They warned that once the act is invoked, Trump could simply designate anyone as a Tren de Aragua member and remove them from the country.
Boasberg halted the deportations of those Venezuelans on Saturday morning when the lawsuit was filed, but later expanded it to encompass all individuals in federal custody who might be targeted by the act following his afternoon hearing. He pointed out that the law has never before been invoked outside of a congressionally declared war and that plaintiffs might successfully argue Trump overstepped his legal authority in doing so.
The ban on deportations is effective for up to 14 days, and the immigrants will remain in federal custody throughout this period. Boasberg has scheduled a hearing for Friday to consider further arguments in the case.
He emphasized the need for immediate action, stating that the immigrants potentially at risk of unconstitutional deportations deserved to have their appeals heard in court.
“Once they’re out of the country,” Boasberg remarked, “there’s little I could do.”
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Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela.
