Trump opens war with the courts after deportation of nearly 300 Venezuelans to El Salvador

The fight is on. On one side, the Trump administration, determined to demonstrate to its voters its extreme forcefulness in its immigration and deportation policies. An administration that defends the use of an 18th-century law designed for times of war to expel nearly 300 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador without any due process, despite a judge’s order against it. An executive that deports or denies entry to foreigners with legal residence papers who have not been charged with any crimes. On the other side, the courts that block it. The government is entrenched in its positions, and the judges insist on demanding explanations, in a confrontation that could go all the way to the Supreme Court. On Monday, the Justice Department made an attempt to have the case reassigned to another judge after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg called a hearing to know why the federal government apparently disobeyed his orders to not deport the migrants, and the government’s lawyers refused to answer his questions.

The debate on Monday focused on whether the White House disobeyed Boasberg’s oral order banning the deportation of 238 Venezuelans whom the Trump administration accuses of being members of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization. The judge’s instructions included the return of the planes transporting them even if they had already taken off and were in mid-flight. But the planes did not return and landed in El Salvador instead. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, a Trump administration ally, appeared to mock the judge with a social media message in which he wrote in English “Oopsie, too late” and included a laughing emoji.

The White House has closed ranks to assert that it acted correctly and did not disobey the court order. The planes were already flying over international waters when the order arrived, so the courts "lacked jurisdiction" in the case, it maintains.

Part of the dispute centers on the fact that there were two versions of the order. Verbally, around 6:48 p.m. on Saturday, the judge banned the flights and specified that they would have to return immediately if they were already in the air. The written instruction was issued at 7:26 p.m. Data from flight tracking applications indicates the planes landed in Honduras at 7:37 p.m. and from there continued to El Salvador. The White House asserts that the administration’s actions did not conflict with the written order, and that the planes took off before that document was issued. At a press conference on Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt questioned whether the oral order had the same legal weight as the written order. “All of the planes subject to the written order of this judge departed U.S. soil, U.S. territory before the judge’s written order,” she said. Lawyers for the Department of Justice are following the same line of reasoning. Boasberg has given government lawyers until noon Tuesday to deliver information about the flight timelines, and how many people might be affected by the administration’s proposed use of the outdated law on removals. Legal experts insist that the timing of the planes’ takeoff is irrelevant to the obligation to comply with the injunction.

Speaking to Fox News, White House border czar Tom Homan stated that the administration will continue with deportations, summary expulsions, and the use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. This law, designed for wartime, grants the president extraordinary powers to expel non-citizens who owe allegiance to foreign powers in cases of conflict or invasion by an enemy nation. It has only been invoked three times in history: in the War of 1812 against the United Kingdom, in World War I against Austro-Hungarian citizens, and in World War II to intern people of Japanese, German, or Italian descent in prison camps. “We’re not stopping,” Homan told Fox News in an interview. “I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the left thinks. We’re coming.”

The White House's entrenchment in a position that is enormously popular among its supporters, at the expense of legal proceedings and confrontation with judges, could trigger an escalation in the Trump administration's challenge to the American system of separation of powers and judicial oversight. Since coming to power nearly two months ago, government officials and their supporters have repeatedly complained about court rulings blocking their most controversial actions, from the dismissal of federal employees to the repeal of birthright citizenship.

Mark S. Zaid, a lawyer specializing in national security issues, posted on X that the events marked the “start of true constitutional crisis.”

In his remarks to the press aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, Trump asserted that the expulsion of the 238 Venezuelans to Salvadoran prisons was due to a situation more dangerous than a war, an invasion by “bad people.”

The case of the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador is not the only one that threatens to generate a fierce court battle over U.S. immigration policy. Brown University professor Rasha Alawieh, a 34-year-old Lebanese national residing in the United States on a work visa, traveled to her home country to visit her family. Upon her return, she was denied entry onto U.S. soil and deported to Lebanon via Paris, despite a court order prohibiting such a move. Some media outlets reported that, according to the Department of Homeland Security, Alawieh had photographs of leaders of the Lebanese radical Islamist group Hezbollah on her phone.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) denounces the doctor’s deportation. “Deporting lawful immigrants like Dr. Alawieh without any basis undermines the rule of law and reinforces suspicion that our immigration system is turning into an anti-Muslim, white supremacist institution that seeks to expel and turn away as many Muslims and people of color as possible,” CAIR maintains.

Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Palestinian student Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States married to a U.S. citizen, and transferred him to one of its detention centers. The State Department revoked his residency permit, accusing him of being a sympathizer of the radical Palestinian group Hamas, after Khalil participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University. His lawyers emphasized that the student has not been charged with any crime and denounced that their client’s right to freedom of expression is being violated.

Added to these cases are the accusations by Astrid Senior, a woman who reported this weekend that her son, Fabian Schmidt, a German national with a U.S. residency permit, was stripped naked and “violently interrogated” upon his arrival in Boston from Luxembourg. Customs and Border Protection denies these accusations.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition