President Donald Trump’s administration made the calculated decision to ignore the directive of a judge to activate two flights containing hundreds of alleged venezuelan gangs, said sources familiar with the ABC News affair.
The verbal order of the Washington chief judge, DC, district court, James Boasberg, explicitly told the government to overthrow any plane that had already left the country if it was still in the air.
Salvadoral police escorts members of the members of the Venezuelan gang Tren of Aragua recently expelled by the United States government to be imprisoned in the prison of the Terrorism Center for Terrorism, in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador, obtained on March 16, 2025.
PRESENCIA PRENSA secretaria via Reuters
“You will immediately inform your customers of any plane containing these people who will take off or in the air must be returned to the United States,” said Boasberg during an audience on Saturday. “However, this is accomplished, turning on the plane, or not boarding anyone on the plane.
Finding the deportations would cause irreparable damage, Boasberg prohibited the Trump administration from deporting “all the non-citizens who are subject to the proclamation of the AEA” for at least 14 days, imposing a temporary prohibition order or TRO.
Meanwhile, while the trial passes before the courts, immigration and the application of customs are intended to maintain the non-citizens under his care.
However, the best lawyers and officials of the administration decided that, as flights were on international waters, the order of Boasberg did not apply.
The administration said the planes should land for “operational” and “national security” reasons, “sources said in ABC News.
It was during the hearing that the two planes took off.
Sources have indicated that the administration wanted to put these planes in the air and on international waters before any decision of the judge.
However, the secretary to the press Karoline Leavitt said Sunday evening that the administration “had not” refused to comply “to a court order”.
She said the order had been made after the alleged gang members “had already been withdrawn from the American territory”, arguing that “the written order and the actions of the administration are not in conflict”.
“The federal courts generally have no competence on the conduct of the president of foreign affairs, its authorities under the law on extraterrestrial enemies and its main powers of article II to withdraw foreign foreign terrorists and repel a declared invasion,” Leavitt said in a statement.
Also Sunday, the Trump administration asked DC Circuit Court a suspension of Boasberg’s decision.
Administration officials argue that Boasberg lacked competence to enter the Tro, which the administration described in a file before the court of appeal as “unprecedented”.
“This court should interrupt this massive and unauthorized taxation to the authority of the executive to withdraw the persons whom the defendants had determined to be members of the ADD, a group that the president and the secretary of state have judged a threat to national security. This court should interrupt this threat of the Americans” aboard the flight, which claims that the administration is a member of the Venezuelan gang of Aragua.
Trump announced on Saturday that he had signed a proclamation declaring that the Gang Tren of Aragua “waged an irregular war” against the United States and would therefore expel its members under the Act respecting extraterrestrial enemies of 1798.
The alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren of Aragua who were expelled by the United States government, are detained at the Terrorism Contest Center in Tecoleca, El Salvador in a photo obtained on March 16, 2025.
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The stay argued that Trump’s actions by invoking the AEA “are not subject to a legal examination” and that there was “no legal basis” for the Court to prohibit the implementation of the president’s proclamation.
“If this TRO made it possible to stand up,” wrote the DoJ in the file, “the district courts would have a license to prohibit any urgent action for national security at the reception of a complaint.”
The DC Circuit Court ordered an answer to file on Tuesday at 5 p.m. by lawyers representing the complainants in the underlying case.
