DJT Deports More Than 260 Venezuelans to El Salvador for Imprisonment and Defies Court Order

Using an executive order signed late the previous night and not published until after it leaked, Donald Trump deported more than 260 Venezuelans to El Salvador for imprisonment in violation of a court order.

Credit goes to Heather Cox Richardson for pulling together most of the details below, and to The Hill for a couple of timing details.

According to Tim Sullivan and Elliot Spagat of Associated Press, Trump has agreed to pay El Salvador $6 million to imprison 300 men for a year.

Marc Caputo of Axios reported the following events were organized by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem.

Morning: News of the EO leaked. Later in the day the White House added the EO to its website.

14:31: After the leak but before EU publication, an immigration activist announced through social media  “TWO HIGHLY UNUSUAL I[mmigration and] C[ustoms] E[nforcement] flights” were leaving Texas, heading to El Salvador. Trump’s regime was deporting to El Salvador more than 200 men, saying they were members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward sued against the deportation on grounds that Trump would use his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans without ensuring any evidence of gang membership and without regard to whether Venezuela is actually trying to invade the USA. ACLU and DF asked federal court for a temporary restraining order against deportation of five Venezuelans in federal custody, at least one of whom said he did not belong to the targeted gang.

Five men who were named as plaintiffs in the legal filing were taken off the airplanes.

Federal District Court Judge James E. Boasberg, who is Chief Judge of the D.C. Circuit, issued the requested TRO.

The regime promptly appealed.

ACLU asked the court to extend the TRO over all immigrants who might be targeted under the new EO. At some point during the hearing, Boasberg did so.

According to Ryan Goodman of Just Security:

17:00: Boasberg asked the government whether deportations would occur within 24 to 48 hours. The regime’s lawyer did not know know. ACLU advised that government’s pace was fast.

17:22: Boasberg ordered a break until 18:00 to allow the government’s lawyer to gather information.

17:45: Another deportation flight departed.

18:52: Boasberg agreed with the ACLU that the Alien Enemies Act applies only to “enemy nations” (a gang is not a nation) and blocked deportations which rely on the Act for authority.

According to Nnamdi Egwuonwu and Gary Grumbach of NBC News:

Boasberg verbally ordered the government to turn around the deportation flights that were in progress and return them to the USA. “Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off, or is in the air, needs to be returned to the United States. Those people need to be returned to the United States.”

Oral orders are frequently issued from the bench and are as binding as written orders.

The orders were posted in writing to the court’s docket at 19:26.

According to Caputo, by then the flights were off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. White House officials discussed whether to order the flights to return. They chose not to.

The first two deportation flights landed in Honduras at 19:36 and 20:02. They took off again and landed in El Salvador hours after Boasberg’s order. (Early reports by Goodman mistakenly indicated the first flight landed in El Salvador at 20:02.) The third flight is reported to have departed from Texas after Boasberg’s order.

Later in the night, in social media El Salvador President Nayib Bukele reposted an article about the judge’s order to return the flight. In a comment, he added, “Oopsie… Too late,” with a laughing emoji. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reposted Bukele’s post.

Legal commentator Joyce White Vance summarized the situation. “We are inevitably headed to a confrontation between a president who has rejected the rule of law and a judge sworn to enforce it. We are in an exceedingly dangerous moment for democracy.”

The following day, DOJ attorneys tried various excuses for why the flights continued after Boasberg’s order, such as that the flights were no longer within the USA when the order was issued, or the verbal order to comply immediately was not in effect until the subsequent written order was entered into the electronic docket.

Many Venezuelan and El Salvadoran immigrants detained by ICE disappeared from the tracking system for people in detention. Family members of some of the missing men believed they saw their disappeared relatives on video of men from the flights being taken off the flights and processed into El Salvador’s maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center, called CECOT, which is designed to hold up to 40,000 prisoners.

The prison is a 57 acre facility. About 150 prisoners are held each cell with two toilets and two Bibles per cell. Lights are on in the cells continuously. Bunks are in racks four-high. Prisoners leave their cell for 30 minutes a day for exercise or Bible study. Recreation, visitation, and phone calls are not allowed. Controversies and allegations of human rights violations abound.

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson’s full post about this episode.

Click here for more about immigrants being disappeared by the government.