White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says the court’s order lacked legal basis and was issued after the flights left U.S. territory.
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.
“The Administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order,” 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.”
Leavitt made the clarification following U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s
ruling on Saturday that blocked President Donald Trump’s proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act. Boasberg also ordered the return of deportation flights already en route to El Salvador.
Following the ruling, 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. It stated that five Venezuelan detainees—the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that led to the court’s ruling—are still in the United States.
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.
Trump signed the
proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act on March 15 to hasten the deportation of accused members of the Tren de Aragua gang. The administration
agreed to pay El Salvador $6 million to hold roughly 300 alleged members of the gang, as well as two alleged members of the MS-13 gang, in its prisons for a year.
Prior to the proclamation, Boasberg issued an order on March 15 barring the
deportation of those five plaintiffs, currently detained in Texas over their alleged ties to the Tren de Aragua criminal gang, for a period of two weeks as the legal proceedings continue.
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.
Following reports on Boasberg’s order that called for the return of the deportation flights to the United States, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele shared a message on social media,
writing, “Oopsie… Too late.”
Nearly 300 immigrants accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang have been deported “at the President’s direction,” Leavitt said in a March 16
statement.
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.
After Boasberg initially blocked deportation actions against the first five plaintiffs, the Department of Justice
argued that allowing such a ruling to stand would suggest any district court “would have license to enjoin virtually any urgent national-security action just upon receipt of a complaint.”
Jacob Burg, Ryan Morgan, and Reuters contributed to this report.
