Over the weekend, the United States launched into its latest showdown over presidential power.
Following a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump invoked an 18th century wartime law that he says gives him power to deport dangerous immigrants – in this case, Venezuelans he accuses of belonging to a notorious gang. Late Saturday, a federal judge issued an order blocking the administration from carrying out the deportations.
But by Sunday it became clear that over 100 immigrants had been taken to El Salvador, raising questions about whether the administration had defied the judge’s order.
Why We Wrote This
To aid his deportation campaign, President Trump has invoked a 1798 law that was last used for World War II internments. Questions swirled about whether he had defied a court order in sending more than 100 people to an El Salvador prison.
Beyond questions of compliance, the administration made clear it disagreed strongly with the judge’s ruling, and is doubling down in its latest claim to expansive executive authority. Future rulings in its favor could further pave the way for mass deportation plans.
The invoked law is “an extreme measure,” says Kevin Kenny, immigration historian at New York University. “It’s not actually clear what the courts will make of this.”
The law at issue is the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. It allows the president in wartime to proclaim male immigrants aged 14 and older “liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies.” The rarely invoked law was last used to detain people of Japanese, Italian, and German descent during World War II. Campaigning in Colorado this past fall, Mr. Trump threatened to wield the law against migrant criminal networks.
Now, President Trump has followed through. He signed an executive order, dated Friday, invoking the Alien Enemies Act to apprehend and deport suspected Venezuelan members of the criminal group Tren de Aragua. The executive order claims that an unspecified number are “conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States.”
The order, which a White House website indicates was posted Saturday, says the group has “invaded” the U.S. Mr. Trump has used this language to describe illegal immigration broadly.
Secretaria de Prensa de la Presidencia/Reuters
On Saturday, the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward sued the Trump administration in anticipation of the president invoking the wartime act against detained Venezuelans to deport them. Judge James Boasberg ultimately issued a temporary restraining order blocking the government from doing so.
Trump administration officials called the judge’s ruling an outrageous abuse of power.
The judge “supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi in a statement. She added that the order disregarded “well-established authority regarding President Trump’s power.” Several Republican lawmakers echoed the administration’s criticisms. GOP Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas said on X that he planned to file articles of impeachment against the “activist judge” this week.
However, it appears that many Venezuelan immigrants were deported anyway. On Sunday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X that, over the weekend, the Department of Homeland Security arrested “nearly 300 Tren de Aragua terrorists,” who were “removed to El Salvador.”
Judge Boasberg told the lawyers on Saturday that any outbound planes needed to turn around. The lack of clarity over the deportations’ timing stirred debate over whether the Trump administration was openly defying the judicial branch.
Ms. Leavitt said that the judge’s order was issued after “terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory,” Axios reported, and she contends that the administration “did not ‘refuse to comply.’”
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele confirmed in a post of his own Sunday that “the first 238 members” of TdA had arrived and were transferred to a mega-prison “for a period of one year (renewable).” Secretary of State Marco Rubio also posted on X that the U.S. had entered into an arrangement by which El Salvador would hold the suspected TdA members “in their very good jails at a fair price.”
The government has appealed the judge’s order. The Monitor has reached out to spokespeople at the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment.
Human rights groups have decried the government’s actions this weekend as a step toward authoritarianism. The court order, if actually “defied,” marks the “start of a true constitutional crisis,” said national security attorney Mark Zaid on X.
Immigrant advocates are also sounding the alarm over the apparent denial of due process, which generally extends to immigrants on U.S. soil. The ACLU has said that some of the Venezuelans being targeted by the administration have no involvement with TdA gang activity, and are seeking asylum.
Mr. Trump’s executive order “recalls some of the most shameful parts of U.S. history,” and could “absolutely trample any semblance of due process and civil rights” for Venezuelans, said Mekela Goehring, executive director of Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, in a statement.
The extent of TdA’s footprint in the United States is debated. The Biden administration, which called TdA a transnational criminal organization, began reporting Border Patrol encounters with suspected affiliates in March 2023.
This past December, the head of INTERPOL Washington said that TdA had “emerged as a significant threat to the United States as it infiltrates migration flows from Venezuela.” The Trump administration has designated TdA as a foreign terrorist organization.
Local and federal law enforcement have linked suspected TdA members to violent crimes across the country. However, the criteria for determining those affiliations is not always clear. Suspected members and their families have denounced officials’ claims of TdA ties.
