White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied allegations that President Donald Trump‘s administration willfully ignored a federal judge’s orders to return two flights full of alleged Venezuelan gang members.
“The Administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order,” Leavitt wrote Monday morning on X, pushing back against a news report. “The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory.”
Axios reported over the weekend the Trump administration defied the judge’s order by claiming that the flights were over international waters, making the ruling null.
After Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to order the immediate deportation of all Venezuelan illegal immigrants 14 years and older who are members of Tren de Aragua, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge in the District of Columbia, ordered a two-week halt of the deportations on Saturday.
But the plane took off during the hearing before the ruling was issued. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele later said “238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren de Aragua,” arrived in his nation in a lengthy social media statement.
“As always, we continue advancing in the fight against organized crime,” Bukele wrote. “But this time, we are also helping our allies, making our prison system self-sustainable, and obtaining vital intelligence to make our country an even safer place. All in a single action.”
Bukele also later taunted the defiance of the order in a separate post. “Oopsie… Too late,” he wrote with a laughing emoji over a New York Post headline.
The controversial decision to defy the order will likely set up a Supreme Court showdown.
Leavitt continued to defend the administration’s actions, claiming Boasberg does not have the authority to limit Trump’s actions.
TRUMP THANKS EL SALVADOR’s BUKELE FOR TAKING IN MS-13 AND TREN DE ARAGUA ‘MONSTERS’
“The written order and the Administration’s actions do not conflict,” Leavitt continued. “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.”
“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrying foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil,” Leavitt concluded.
