The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) questioned Monday whether the White House violated a court order directing it to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan migrants.
A federal judge in D.C. on Saturday barred the Trump administration from carrying out deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.
President Trump over the weekend signed an order invoking the war powers to swiftly deport anyone suspected of membership in the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The process does not allow for a hearing, sparking fears it will lead to widespread deportations of Venezuelans without connection to the gang.
But while the order from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg temporarily blocked the order from taking effect, the Trump administration was accused of not following the judge’s order to turn around any planes carrying Venezuelans targeted under the order.
The ACLU said the order “unambiguously” directed the government to turn around its planes and it asks that the government be forced to prove they complied.
“Based on publicly available information, it appears that there were at least two flights that took off during the hearing but landed even after this Court’s written Order, meaning that Defendants could have turned the plane around without handing over individuals,” the ACLU wrote in its filing.
“Whether or not the planes had cleared U.S. territory, the U.S. retained custody at least until the planes landed and the individuals were turned over to foreign governments. And the Court could not have been clearer that it was concerned with losing jurisdiction and authority to order the individuals returned if they were handed over to foreign governments, not with whether the planes had cleared U.S. territory or had even landed in another country.”
The ACLU said Boasberg issued an oral order to turn around the planes at approximately 6:45. Those instructions were also posted to the court’s docket at 7:26 p.m.
The ACLU included flight information it received from the government, indicating planes did not land until 7:36 p.m. and 8:02 p.m. Sunday.
But the organization said both public reporting and publicly available flight data suggest that “continuations” of those flights didn’t leave Texas until 7:27 p.m., landing in Nicaragua at 9:46 p.m.
The filing asks the court to force the Trump administration to submit sworn declarations about the timing of the flights.
According to a tweet from Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele, the country has agreed to hold 238 Venezuelans in its “Terrorism Confinement Center.”
The White House has fired back at the accusation, saying it did not violate the order, suggesting that Boasberg does not have authority on the matter despite courts routinely weighing administrations’ immigration policies.
“The Administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order. The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory. The written order and the Administration’s actions do not conflict. Moreover, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear — federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over the President’s conduct of foreign affairs, his authorities under the Alien Enemies Act, and his core Article II powers to remove foreign alien terrorists from U.S. soil and repel a declared invasion,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X.
“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil.”
