Conservatives criticize courts as Trump deports Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador

President Donald Trump used wartime authority to deport nearly 240 alleged Latin American gang members to a mega-prison in El Salvador over the weekend.

A federal judge unsuccessfully sought to block the administration’s actions, leading White House officials and prominent conservative figures, including Utah Sen. Mike Lee, to criticize the court as an obstacle to Trump’s deportation agenda.

“Does this seem like the kind of thing a single federal judge should be able to do?” Lee asked in a post to X on Saturday, before adding, “This isn’t funny.”

As polls show a large majority of Americans — including 90% of Utahns — support the deportation of unauthorized immigrants who have committed crimes, some Republicans framed the administration’s legal setbacks as antidemocratic, while others pointed out that the president’s methods have little precedent.

Who did Trump expel to El Salvador?

On Saturday afternoon, Trump issued a proclamation calling on powers outlined in the U.S. Constitution and Alien Enemies Act to make members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua subject to “immediate apprehension, detention, and removal.”

Within a few hours, three flights took off from southern Texas to El Salvador, loaded with 261 deportees, including 137 alleged members of Tren de Aragua expelled under the Alien Enemies Act, 101 Venezuelan citizens — also alleged members of Tren de Aragua — deported under regular Title 8 deportation proceedings and 23 members of the Salvadoran gang MS13, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

The arrested immigrants landed in El Salvador early Sunday morning as part of a deal with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele to house them for $6 million a year, which is “pennies on the dollar” in comparison to the cost of keeping them in maximum security prisons in the U.S., Leavitt said during her Monday press briefing.

“The president is using every lever of his executive authority and his constitutional authority within the bounds of the immigration laws of our country to ensure that our streets are safer for law abiding American citizens,” Leavitt said. “We are very grateful to Bukele for receiving these heinous monsters where they will face justice.”

What is Tren de Aragua?

Over the last decade, Tren de Aragua has expanded its operations of drug smuggling, theft and sex trafficking from its origin in a Venezuela prison to locations across Latin America and into the United States.

More than half a million Venezuelans have claimed asylum in the U.S. since 2022, with the vast majority not assumed to be part of Tren de Aragua.

Members of Tren de Aragua are suspected to be behind a wave of robberies, the takeover of an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado, the shooting of police officers in New York and Florida, and the high-profile murders of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley and 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray.

In November, Gov. Spencer Cox announced that law enforcement had identified the presence of Tren de Aragua in Utah. Group members have been charged with burglary and assault in connection with an alleged prostitution operation in Millcreek and a gang-related shooting and car crash in Herriman.

On Monday, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Salt Lake City Field Office reported the arrest of a Tren De Aragua gang member charged with stalking, tampering with a witness and reckless driving.

What is the Alien Enemies Act of 1798?

Trump is the first president to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 since President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the law to intern Japanese Americans during World War II. It was also used during the War of 1812 and World War I, according to the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.

The Alien Enemies Act allows for the immediate removal of people from a foreign nation at war with the U.S. It also applies to those belonging to a “hostile nation or government” that threatens the territory of the U.S. with “any invasion or predatory incursion.”

On Feb. 20, the U.S. Department of State executed a Day 1 executive order from Trump by designating eight gangs and cartels, including Tren De Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists, giving the U.S. attorney general and U.S. treasurer more legal and financial tools to punish those involved in terrorist activity.

Trump’s Saturday proclamation referred to Tren de Aragua as a “hybrid criminal state,” because of its control over areas of Venezuela, that is “perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States” by “using illegal narcotics as a weapon.”

However, Trump’s use of the authority to unilaterally expel unauthorized immigrants without a court hearing drew the ire of James Boasberg, the Obama-appointed chief judge of the District Court for the U.S. District of Columbia, who ordered the administration to turn the planes around during a hasty court hearing on Saturday.

Did Trump defy court orders?

Despite the court ruling, which put a 14-day pause on the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, the planes landed in El Salvador early on Sunday morning, with Salvadoran President Bukele posting on X, “Oopsie… Too late(.)"

On Monday, news channels were filled with clips from a video posted by Bukele of the 238 Venezuelan citizens being received by Salvadoran law enforcement and taken to the country’s Terrorism Confinement Center.

A court hearing was held on Monday on the Trump administration’s actions related to the court ruling, which came in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of five Venezuelan deportees who deny they are members of Tren de Aragua.

“The President’s use of the Alien Enemies Act is flat out lawless,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney behind the lawsuit, according to CBS News.

During Monday’s press brief, Leavitt told reporters that the “administration acted within the confines of the law” because “all the planes subject to the judge’s written order took off,” and were over international waters, “before the order was entered in the court room on Saturday.”

“We are quite confident in that. And we are wholly confident we will win this case in court,” Leavitt said.

If it is decided that federal agencies defied the court order, a judge could hold the Trump administration in contempt, applying sanctions and fines or seeking jail-time to enforce compliance.

Denial of a court order could also lead to impeachment proceedings, according to Mark Zaid, a national security attorney, and could mark “the start of true constitutional crisis.”

Conservatives criticize courts

In response to the district court decision, Lee, who is a constitutional lawyer by training, said it was “time to file a petition for an extraordinary writ of mandamus,” a legal motion asking a higher court to order a government official or a lower court to perform a specific duty that they are legally obligated to perform.

Lee joined two dozen other members of Congress in voicing their opposition to the court order, arguing that district judges do not have jurisdiction over foreign policy decisions, particularly since none of the deportees lived in the judge’s district.

On Monday, Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, told “Fox & Friends,” “We are not stopping; I don’t care what the judges think,” and Trump’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, called the ruling “preposterous.”

“If a district court judge can be involved in the conduct of our foreign policy, under no definition do we have a democracy in the country.” said Miller, who is seen as the architect behind the administration’s immigration policy.

The Trump administration has also received pushback in its efforts to deport university students and employees with legal residency status.

A week before the flights to El Salvador, Department of Homeland Security officials arrested Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, saying Khalil’s student visa had been revoked because of his leading role in anti-Israel campus protests and his support for Hamas.

The arrest, and Khalil’s subsequent removal from New York to Louisiana, sparked a tsunami of legal opposition from free speech groups arguing that First Amendment-protected speech cannot be used as grounds to deport Khalil, who is a permanent U.S. resident with a green card and is married to a U.S. citizen.

On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had also revoked the work visa of Brown University professor Rasha Alawieh and denied her reentry into the U.S. after she attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon.

“A visa is a privilege not a right,” the announcement said. “This is commonsense security.”