President Donald Trump’s administration deported members of Venezuelan gangster Tren de Aragua from the United States to El Salvador, despite court orders banning ouster from the country.
Sunday’s move is the latest in a series of steps the Trump administration will take to expel foreigners. Some have been accused of being in the US without documents, and others have targeted protests on campus.
Here’s what happened and whether it violated the court’s order:
what happened?
El Salvador President Naive Buquere said on Sunday that his country received 238 Tren de Aragua members and 23 more members of Salvador gangster MS-13 from the United States.
In a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month, Buquere agreed to be in prison for members of these groups on behalf of the United States.
He said these deportees were under custody of the Central American state Centre for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) for a one-year period.
In Trump’s inauguration speech, he said he would call the Alien Enemy Act of 1798. On Saturday, Trump signed a declaration calling that 227 law. The declaration argues that Tren de Aragua is “inflicting, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory invasion” against US territory. It adds that all Venezuelan citizens who are “gang members” over the age of 14 and are not naturalized or legal permanent residents are responsible for being detained and removed as “an alien enemies.”
Following Trump’s order, James Boasberg, the District Court Supreme Court Justice of the District of Columbia, issued a temporary restraining order to block Trump’s ability to use wartime force to expel deportation. This was during a Saturday hearing called for by the American Civil Liberties Union.
However, hours later, Bukere confirmed that the Trump administration was still pushing for deportation. He shared a snippet of a news article about the judge’s verdict and captioned it: “oopsie…too late” crying with a laughing emoji.
What is the alien enemy and how does it work?
Alien enemy laws allow US presidents to detain or deport non-citizens during wartime. In 1798, the United States was prepared for what it believed was a war with France. The law was introduced to prevent immigrants from sympathizing with the French.
The law allows the president to carry out these deportations without hearing and be based solely on citizenship.
This law was only called three times during the war of 1812 between World War I and the Second World War.
Why is this controversial?
Trump and his allies argue that the US poses a threat of “aggression” by undocumented immigrants, but critics say the president is miscalculating wartime laws.
An explanator released last year by the Brennan Center for Justice said it would call the law “which would be incredible abuse during peacetime to bypass traditional immigration laws.”
“The courts should try to use alien enemy laws in peacetime,” he added.
The fifth amendment to the US Constitution protects the rights to the Great Juice. “No one answers the capital or infamous crime during the presentation or prosecution of a major ju court,” he said, adding that wartime was one of the few exceptions to this.
The fact that the Trump administration could violate the judge’s orders further exacerbates this controversy.
The White House’s actions were “open rebellion” to Boasburg’s orders, Patrick Eddington, a legal expert on homeland security and civil liberties at Washington, D.C., told Reuters.
“It’s pale and certainly beyond unprecedented,” Eddington said.
However, White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt opposed the criticism.
“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movement of an aircraft. It is full of foreign alien terrorists physically expelled from US soil,” Leavitt said in a statement posted on his X account on Sunday. She added: “Federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over the president’s diplomacy acts.”
Bruce Fein, an American lawyer specializing in constitutional and international law, opposed.
“The president is not the king. January 20, 2025 was not a cor crown,” Fein told Al Jazeera. “The president is not Napoleon. … The federal courts have jurisdiction over the president. There is a high probability that Trump has downplayed Justice James Boasberg’s orders, but we need to wait for more legitimate processes.”
The administration did not “refuse to comply” with court orders. The order without a legitimate basis was issued after the terrorist TDA aliens were already excluded from US territory. Written orders and the actions of the government are not inconsistent. What’s more, the best… https://t.co/dnjusuwtlh
– Karoline Leavitt (@presssec) March 17, 2025
Leavitt argued that by the time the court order was issued, the state nar had been removed from the United States. The exact timing of the deportation flight is unknown.
Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Law Center at Georgetown University, posted to Bruski that “federal court jurisdiction does not stop at the edge of the water.” In other words, according to Vladeck, these deportees should be brought back to the US, even if they had left the US airspace before the judge issued an order.
“The jurisdiction of the court will turn on the presence of a US defendant, not a plaintiff,” explained Fein, adding that the defendant Trump in this case is in the US. “He could be ordered to return an exile who had been illegally deported to the United States.”
Why were these people sent to El Salvador?
Bukere is detaining the exile under a transaction that the United States agreed to compensate them to retain El Salvador, Bukere wrote in the X-Post. The Trump administration is planning to pay around $6 million to El Salvador for detaining about 300 Tren de Aragua members from Venezuela for a year.
The Salvadorian president also shared the video on an X account showing that Decoty, handcuffed, was dragged and shaved on her head and face by a masked Salvadoran police officer.
“The US will pay them very low fees, but they’re expensive for us.”
Today, Tren de Aragua, the first 238 members of Venezuelan crime organization, has arrived in our country. They were immediately transferred to CECOT, the Centre for the (renewable) terrorism confinement for a year.
The US will pay them very low fees…pic.twitter.com/tfsi8cgpd6
– Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) March 16, 2025
Venezuela does not generally accept retirees from the US. The Trump administration sent Venezuela deportation to a third Central American country. “The United States does not have a decent relationship with Venezuela,” human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith told Al Jazeera.
Over the past month, Venezuela has accepted around 350 outcasts. This includes about 180 people who were detained for 16 days at a US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As of 2022, there were 275,000 unauthorized Venezuelan immigrants in the United States, according to estimates from the Pew Research Center.
What is CECOT?
The Centro de conpenmiento del Terrorismo is El Salvador’s largest security prison with a capacity of 40,000 people. That’s where gang members of suspected deported by the US are currently in custody.
MegaPrisons prohibits visiting, education and recreation. Inmates are not allowed to go outside.
CECOT opened in January 2023 within a year after Bukele ordered it to be built. It is located in Tecolca, 72km (45 miles) east of Salvador’s capital, Salvador.
What is Tren de Aragua?
Tren de Aragua, Spanish for “Aragua Train,” is designated by the United States as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
Although information about the group is sparse, media reports previously suggest that it was formed in 2014 by Hector “El Nino” Guerrero and two other men who were jailed in the Tocolon prison in Aragua, Venezuela. The gangs are said to have largely ruled the prison and ordered the temptation from behind Burberry, murder and temptation.
The gang is said to be behind the 2024 murder of former Venezuelan army officer Ronald Ojeda, who conspired against President Nicolas Maduro. In January, Maduro was sworn in for his third term in office after an election fight.
The White House declaration claimed that Tren de Aragua was “operated in partnership with Cartel de los Salles, sponsored by the Nicolas Maduro administration of Venezuela-based Narco Terror Enterprises.”
What’s next?
On Sunday, Trump asked the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court to stay at Boasburg’s order. “Your stay will definitely be denied within a few days,” predicted Fein.
Fine added that Trump could seek a stay in the US Supreme Court.
