The White House said on Sunday that deportation flights carrying Venezuelan immigrants suspected of being members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang—a U.S.-designated terrorist organization—did not conflict with a judge’s order that blocked such actions because the ruling was issued after the flights had already left U.S. territory.
“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.”
Leavitt said the ruling had “no lawful basis” and that federal courts have no jurisdiction over the president’s conduct of foreign affairs.
When asked whether his administration had violated the court order, President Donald Trump deferred to the lawyers.
“I can tell you this: these were bad people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, referring to the alleged gang members.
Boasberg issued a second order later that day, giving all noncitizens who would otherwise be subject to the presidential proclamation a class action certification.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and Democracy Forward, representing the five plaintiffs, who had argued that the Alien Enemies Act “plainly only applies to warlike actions.”
“It cannot be used here against nationals of a country—Venezuela—with whom the United States is not at war, which is not invading the United States, and which has not launched a predatory incursion into the United States,” the complaint reads.
She stated that these individuals “were extracted and removed to El Salvador where they will no longer be able to pose any threat to the American People.”
“TDA [Tren de Aragua] is one of the most violent and ruthless terrorist gangs on planet earth. They rape, maim and murder for sport,” Leavitt said.
Trump’s proclamation states that many members of the Tren de Aragua gang have “unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions” against the country.
Boasberg is the chief judge of the U.S. Alien Terrorist Removal Court, created in 1996 under President Bill Clinton.
Speaking with the press on March 17, border czar Tom Homan noted that the Trump administration designated Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization.
“TDA is an enemy of this country,” Homan told a gaggle of reporters outside the White House.
The gang, he said, “invaded this country to unsettle this country, whether it’s through fentanyl killing thousands of Americans or through the violence they’re perpetrating on our cities.”
As for the judge’s orders, Homan said the administration abided by the first order concerning the five Venezuelans still being held in Texas but that the second came too late for officials to turn “a plane full of terrorists and public safety threats” around.
“What are we going to refuel over international waters, come back, and bring terrorists back to the United States? That’s not what this president promised the American people. What the president did was exactly the right thing,” he said.