The Department of Justice is defending the White House's decision to carry out deportation flights over the weekend.
Three flights left the U.S. on Saturday with suspected Venezuelan gang members. The Trump administration says it was an effort to rid the U.S. of a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua, also known as TdA.
But there are growing questions about the constitutionality of the administration's actions and if it skirted a federal judge's orders.
On Saturday at around 4:00 p.m., the White House posted an order invoking the Alien Enemies Act. The obscure wartime law is from 1798 and gives the president sweeping powers to deport noncitizens, without having their case heard by a judge.
Later that day, at 5:26 p.m. and 5:45 p.m., two flights took off from Texas carrying deportees, according to FlightAware.
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At around 6:45 p.m., District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an oral order for the planes to return to the U.S.
At 7:25 p.m., Boasberg issued a written order that no more migrants should be removed under the president's proclamation for at least two weeks. But about 10 minutes later, a third flight carrying deportees departed from Texas.
In a court filing on Tuesday, Robert Cerna, an acting field office director within ICE, said that all the people on the third plane had Title 8 removal orders and therefore "were not removed solely on the basis of the Proclamation at issue."
It's unclear where all the deportees ended up. But on Sunday, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said 238 suspected gang members arrived in his country and were transferred to the "Terrorism Confinement Center" for a year. The U.S. is paying El Salvador's government $6 million to hold the migrants.
The White House is defending its decision and questioned Boasberg's authority in the case.
"The actions of the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Defense were not in conflict with the judge's order," White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Monday. "But at the same time, it is also true that the judge's order was patently unlawful beyond unlawful, it was an outrageous assault on the Constitution."
But constitutional law experts like University of Houston law professor Emily Berman say Boasberg acted within his authority.
"This is the way the U.S. legal system works," Berman said. "When there is a challenge to the lawfulness of something that the executive branch has done, it is the role of the court to inquire into whether, in fact, those actions are consistent with the rule of law."
Berman says President Trump is looking to test the power of his limits, but she worries about what precedent it could set for future cases of deportation in the U.S.
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"If this is allowed to stand, then anyone, literally anyone in the United States can be picked up, put on a plane and sent to an El Salvador in prison on the say-so of the president of the United States," Berman said. "If he doesn't have to show that this is actually justified in these cases, there's nothing stopping him from doing the same thing to you or to me."
Boasberg again ordered the government's lawyers to submit answers to his questions regarding the flights by noon on Wednesday. He said they could do so privately.
