President Donald Trump is denying reports he refused a court order to turn around two planes of illegal Venezuelan gang members.
Talking with reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump defended this operation deporting 200 ‘monsters’ from the United States back to El Salvador.
‘These were bad people. That was a bad group of, as I say, hombres,’ he said.
Asked about using the Alien Enemies Act outside of wartime, Trump said: ‘This is a time of war because Biden allowed millions of people – many of them criminals, many of them at the highest level.’
‘They emptied jails out – other nations,’ he alleged. ‘It’s an invasion and these are criminals.’
But a federal judge at the last minute tried to block the planes while they were en route.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted U.S. District Judge James Boasberg had no jurisdiction over the flights because the order was issued after the illegal immigrants were over international waters.
She pushed back on the narrative that Trump ‘refused to comply’ with the judge’s order in a blistering rant on X on Monday morning.
She said the planes of alleged Tren de Aragua gang members had already taken off when the judge issued his order.
‘The written order and the Administration’s actions do not conflict,’ she posted to X in response to an Axios article accusing the White House of ‘ignoring’ the judge’s order to turn back the flights
‘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,’ she added.
Leavitt railed against Judge Boasberg by concluding: ‘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.’
El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele confirmed on Sunday that his country received 238 of the TdA gang members deported from the U.S. to be imprisoned there.
In a meeting last month with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Bukele offered to house migrant prisoners from the U.S. in El Salvador’s notorious maximum security Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT).
‘These are the monsters sent into our Country by Crooked Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats. How dare they!’ Trump posted to his Truth Social account.
He continued: ‘Thank you to El Salvador and, in particular, President Bukele, for your understanding of this horrible situation, which was allowed to happen to the United States because of incompetent Democrat leadership. We will not forget!’
Rubio said in a statement on the transfer that ‘hundreds of violent criminals were sent out of our country.’
‘I want to express my sincere gratitude to President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador for playing a pivotal role in this transfer.’
He added that included in the flights were ‘top leaders’ of the MS-13 gang ‘plus 21 of its most wanted to face justice in their homeland.’
Video posted to social media on Sunday shows several men in handcuffs and shackles being transferred from a plane to a heavily guarded convoy.
The clips caused outrage among those against Trump’s deportation operations.
It shows flakked-up and uniformed enforcement pushing around the alleged gang members, showing their gang-affiliated tattoos, shaving their heads and beards and entering them into El Salvdaor’s Terrorism Confinement Center.
The $100 million penitentiary is the largest of its kind in Latin America and was constructed over a span of seven months in 2022. It was part of President Bukele’s plan to rein in street gangs after more than 60 people were murdered on March 26, 2022.
TdA is linked to kidnapping, extortion, organized crime and contract killings.
Trump deported the gang members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1789.
Republicans pushed back on any criticism, claiming that Democrats are defending gang members and terrorists.
