*Event date: 2025-03-15.*
More than 200 Venezuelans alleged by the White House to be gang members were deported from the United States to El Salvador even as a federal judge tried to stop the removals. The clash has become a test of how far the Trump administration is willing to push a sweeping immigration crackdown and how much force a court order has once flights are already in the air.
President Donald Trump had invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime law last used during the Second World War to intern Japanese-American civilians, arguing that members of Tren de Aragua were carrying out an invasion or predatory incursion against the United States. The White House said the deportees were removed before the judge’s order took effect. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied that the administration had refused to comply with a court ruling.
The legal sequence is at the centre of the dispute. Judge James Boasberg in Washington ordered a 14-day pause on deportations covered by the proclamation, and lawyers later said planes had already departed. Reuters reported that the written notice entered the case docket at 19:25 EDT, but the exact departure time remained unclear. The Justice Department told the court that the order did not apply because the people had already been removed from US territory, while the ACLU said the ruling may have been violated.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said 238 members of Tren de Aragua and 23 members of MS-13 had arrived in his country, and that they were transferred to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or Cecot. The facility is part of Bukele’s brutal but popular anti-gang strategy and has been criticised by human rights groups for mistreatment of inmates. The two presidents have also deepened their relationship through a deal that links US deportations with El Salvador’s jail capacity.
The case goes beyond immigration enforcement. Venezuela denounced the use of the Alien Enemies Act, saying it criminalised migration and evoked some of history’s darkest episodes. Rights groups called the move a due-process violation and accused Trump of racist targeting. With hundreds of men already in El Salvador and court challenges still pending, the dispute has become a snapshot of how the administration is using wartime powers to sidestep the normal pace of immigration law.
The choice of the Alien Enemies Act is what makes this case unusual. The law is more than two centuries old and was last used in World War Two, so the administration's use of it to target Venezuelan deportees has given the legal fight a historic edge. El Salvador's Cecot prison, where the men were sent, is itself a symbol of Bukele's hard-line approach and of the broader bargain between two governments that both want to project toughness on crime and migration.
The courtroom fight is only part of the story. Under the US system of checks and balances, government agencies are expected to comply with a federal judge's ruling, which is why the timing of the flights matters so much. If the deportations were already complete, the administration argues the order came too late; if the planes were still in US custody, opponents say the ruling was ignored. That tension is what has turned a deportation case into a constitutional one.
