Oops...too late! US deportations continue despite court ban, flights already in sky

An order by a US federal judge preventing the Donald Trump administration from deporting hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act did not produce an immediate effect as the oral order to turn the planes around was not contained in a written order.

Planes were in the air when the ruling was made.

The US government sent more than 200 Venezuelans to a massive prison in El Salvador. Another plane was bound for Honduras. The White House, which already had designated Tren de Aragua as a terrorist group, had been ready to send around 300 suspected members to El Salvador for detention, AP said. The Donald Trump administration had offered to pay El Salvador Dollar 6 million to jail around 300 suspected members of the gang for a year.

Imminent risk of removal  

US District Judge James E Boasberg was overseeing a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward, which preemptively sued Donald Trump late on Friday, claiming five Venezuelan men held at an immigration detention center in Texas were at "imminent risk of removal" under the Alien Enemies Act. White House

Hybrid criminal state that is waging an invasion  

Donald Trump formally used the act on Saturday to go after suspected illegal immigration facilitated by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. "The end product is a hybrid criminal state that is waging an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States, and which poses a serious risk to the United States," the US president had said. The law, used only three times in US history, deports suspected illegal aliens without a hearing from an immigration or federal court judge. 

Administration was not disobeying court orders 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated on Sunday that the administration was not defying court orders. "The administration didn't seem refuse to obey the orders of court."The unlawful order followed terror TdA aliens who had been physically pushed off US soil," she stated. "One judge in one city can't dictate the travel schedule of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically pushed off US soil," the release continued.

Trump's proclamation of the extraordinary act  

Department of Justice, in its appeal of the judge's order suspending the deportation of five Venezuelan men, stated that it would not use Trump's declaration of the extraordinary act for future deportations in case the court's ruling is not overturned. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele reacted to Boasberg's ruling in a social media update on platform X. "Oopsie…Too late," he stated. 

Venezuelan administration rejected the new deportation move

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who negotiated the agreement with El Salvador, posted on X, "We extradited over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua, who El Salvador has pledged to imprison in their very nice jails at a reasonable price that will also save our taxpayer dollars." The Venezuelan administration dismissed the US government's new deportation action as backed by "the darkest moments of human history, from slavery to the wickedness of the Nazi concentration camps."