The White House has hit back at claims that deportation flights containing Venezuelan gang members were in breach of a judicial order issued on Saturday.
Hundreds of suspected members of vicious gang Tren de Aragua were flown out of the US on Saturday, including to El Salvador. The Trump administration reached a deal with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele to house 300 members of the gang for a year, at a cost of $6 million.
“The Administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft … full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil.”
On Saturday, President Donald Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to speed up the removal of suspected members of Tren de Aragua from the US, without judicial appeal or oversight. Within hours, Obama judge James Boasberg blocked the President’s order and said that flights from the US, including flights that were already in the air, would have to be cancelled.
After the ruling was issued, the government notified the court that “some gang members subject to removal under the Proclamation had already been removed from United States territory” before Boasberg issued the order.
President Trump was asked by reporters about the order while aboard Air Force One, and said he would defer to his lawyers about the legality of the decision to continue with the flights that were already in the air.
“I can tell you this: these were bad people,” the President said.
President Nayib Bukele’s response to Boasberg’s order was short and to the point. “Oopsie… too late,” he Tweeted.
Trump’s presidential order, entitled “Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act Regarding the Invasion of The United States by Tren De Aragua,” states that the group “is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization with thousands of members, many of whom have unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States.”
The order describes how Tren de Aragua “operates in conjunction with Cártel de los Soles, the Nicolas Maduro regime-sponsored, narco-terrorism enterprise based in Venezuela, and commits brutal crimes, including murders, kidnappings, extortions, and human, drug, and weapons trafficking.” The gang is involved in “irregular warfare” against the US, the order continues.
Under the 200-year-old Alien Enemies Act, which was first issued in response to the threat of war with France, the President would have the power to allow non-citizens to be deported without the opportunity to appear before an immigration or federal judge.
Since 1798, the act has been used only three times: during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II, when it was used to inter people of German, Italian and Japanese ancestry. Over 100,000 people with Japanese ancestry were interred in camps between 1941 and 1945, including American citizens.
Trump said on a number of occasions during the election campaign that he would use extraordinary powers to remove illegal aliens.
In his inaugural address, the President said the Alien Enemies Act would be a key part of his immigration policy.
“By invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil,” he said.
“As commander in chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions.”