The administration of President Donald Trump has expelled from alleged members From the Venezuelan gang Tren of Aragua from the United States to El Salvador despite an order of the court prohibiting their expulsion from the country.
Sunday move is the last In a series of measures from the Trump administration to expel foreign nationals – some accused of being in the United States without documentation, others were targeting campus demonstrations.
Here is what happened and if it violated the court order:
What happened?
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said on Sunday that his country had received 238 members from Tren from Aragua and 23 additional MS-13 Salvado Gangs in the United States.
Bukele had accepted members of these groups in prison on behalf of the United States at a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month.
He said that these deportees were in the centers of the center of the country of Central America for the confinement of terrorism (CECOC) for a period of one year that could be extended.
During the inauguration speech of Trump, he declared that he would invoke the law on extraterrestrial enemies of 1798. On Saturday, Trump signed a proclamation invoking this 227 -year law. The proclamation claims that Tren of Aragua “perpetuates, tries and threatens an invasion or a predatory foray” against the American territory. This adds that all Venezuelan citizens aged 14 or more “who are members” of the gang and are not naturalized or legal legal citizens are likely to be retained and withdrawn as “foreign enemies”.
After Trump’s order, Federal Judge James Boasberg, chief judge of the District Court of the Columbia District, made a temporary ban order to block Trump’s ability to exercise powers in wartime to make deportations. It was during an audience of Saturday wanted by the American Civil Liberties Union.
But a few hours later, Bukele confirmed that the Trump administration had nevertheless continued the deportations. He shared an extract from a press article on the judge’s decision, legend: “Oopsy … Too late” with an emoji that cries and laughing.
What are extraterrestrial enemies act and how does it work?
THE Act extraterrestrial enemies Allows us to hold or deport non-Citoyans in wartime. In 1798, the United States was preparing for what it thought was a war with France. The law was introduced to prevent immigrants from sympathizing with the French.
The law authorizes the president to carry out these deportations without audience and based solely on citizenship.
The act was not invoked only three times before, during the War of 1812, the First World War and the Second World War.
Why is it controversial?
While Trump and his allies argued that the United States was threatened with an “invasion” by undocumented immigrants, the criticisms declared that the president wrongly invoke the Act respecting war.
An explanator published by the Brennan Center for Justice Last year, invoking the law “in peacetime to bypass the conventional immigration law would be an amazing abuse”.
“The courts should eliminate any attempt to use the law on extraterrestrial enemies,” he added.
THE Fifth amendment From the American Constitution protects the right to a large jury. “No one will be held to respond to capital, or an infamous crime, unless on a presentation or an indictment of a great jury,” he said, adding that war is one of the few exceptions to this.
The fact that the Trump administration may have challenged a judge’s order still exacerbates this controversy.
The action of the White House was “open defiance” of the order of Boasberg, Patrick Eddington, legal expert in domestic security and civil freedoms at the Cato Institute based in Washington, DC ,, at the Reuters press agency.
“It is beyond the pale and certainly unprecedented,” said Eddington.
But the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed criticism.
“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft … Full of foreign foreign terrorists who were physically expelled from the American soil,” Leavitt said in a statement published on his account X on Sunday. She added: “Federal courts generally have no competence on the conduct of the President of Foreign Affairs.”
Bruce Fein, an American lawyer specializing in constitutional and international law, did not agree.
“The president is not a king. On January 20, 2025, was not a coronation,” Fein told Al Jazeera, referring to the day when Trump was inaugurated. “The president is not Napoleon. … Federal courts have jurisdiction over the president. The probability that Trump had flouted the order of judge James Boasberg, but we must wait for a regular procedure. ”
The administration did not “refuse to comply” to a court order. The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after the Terrorist TDA Aliens had already been withdrawn from the American territory. The written order and the actions of the administration are not in conflict. In addition, as a supreme … https://t.co/dnjusuwtlh
– Karoline Leavitt (@presssec) March 17, 2025
Leavitt argued that when the court order was made, the deportees had been withdrawn from the United States. The exact expulsion flight schedules are not clear.
Steve Vladeck, professor at the law center of the University of Georgetown, posted on Bluesky that “the jurisdiction of a federal court does not stop * at the tip of the water”. In other words, according to Vladeck, these deportees should be brought back to the United States even if they had left American airspace when the judge made his order.
“The court jurisdiction turns on the presence of the defendant in the United States, not to the complainants,” said Fein, adding that Trump, the defendant in this case, is in the United States. “You could be ordered to return deportees who had been illegally expelled to the United States.”
Why were these people sent to Salvador?
Bukele holds the deportees as part of an agreement in which the United States has agreed to compensate for El Salvador to keep them, wrote Bukele in a post X. The Trump administration will pay around $ 6 million in Salvador for having held around 300 alleged members of Tren from Aragua from Venezuela for a year.
The Salvadoral President also shared a video on his account X showing handcuffed deportees being dragged and making the head and faces shaved by masked police from Salvador.
“The United States will pay very low costs for them, but a top for us.”
Today, the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren from Aragua, arrived in our country. They were immediately transferred to Cecot, the center for the confinement of terrorism, for a period of one year (renewable).
The United States will pay them very low costs,… pic.twitter.com/tfsi8cgpd6
– Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) March 16, 2025
Venezuela has generally not accepted deportees from the United States. The Trump administration has sent Venezuelan deportees to third countries from Central America “because the United States has no decent relations with Venezuela,” said Clive Stafford Smith, a human rights lawyer, said Al Jazeera.
During the last month, Venezuela accepted around 350 deportees, including around 180 prisoners at the American naval base in Guantanamo BayCuba, for 16 days. In 2022, there were 275,000 unauthorized Venezuelan immigrants in the United States, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center.
What is CECOT?
The center for the confinement of terrorism (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo) is a prison of 40,000 inhabitants and maximum security in Salvador. This is where the alleged members of the gangs expelled by the United States are now detained.
The mega-prison prohibits visits, education and leisure. Inmates are not allowed to go outside.
Cecot opened its doors in January 2023, in the year following the Bukele order. It is located in Tecoleca, 72 km (45 miles) east of the Salvadorian capital, San Salvador.
What is Tren de Aragua?
Tren de Aragua, who is Spanish for the “Aragua train”, is designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” by the United States.
While information on the group is rare, media reports previously suggested that the group was created in 2014 by Hector “El Nino” Guerrero and two other men imprisoned in Tocoron prison in the Venezuelan state of Aragua. The gang largely controlled the prison, ordering flights, murders and kidnappings behind bars.
The gang would be behind the murder in 2024 of the former Venezuelan army officer Ronald Ojeda, who plotted against President Nicolas Maduro. In January, Maduro was enslave For his third term of six years after a contested election.
A proclamation published by the White House allegedly alleged that Tren de Aragua “works in conjunction with the Los Soles cartel, the narco-terrorist company narco-terrorism based in Venezuela”.
What is the next step?
Trump asked the Washington Court Circuit on Sunday, DC, to suspend the Boasberg prescription. “The stay will certainly be refused in the days,” predicted Fein.
Fein added that Trump could then request a suspension of the Supreme Court of the United States, “who will say no”.
