The Trump administration deported alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua from the United States to El Salvador on Sunday, despite a court order prohibiting their expulsion from the country. This move is part of a series of actions by the administration to expel foreign nationals, including those accused of being in the US without documentation and those targeted over campus protests. Here’s what happened and whether it violated the court order.
El Salvador received 238 members of Tren de Aragua and an additional 23 members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 from the US. The deportees are in the custody of El Salvador’s Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) for a one-year period that could be extended. President Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, claiming that Tren de Aragua is threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against US territory. This law allows the president to detain or deport non-citizens during wartime conditions, without a hearing and based only on citizenship.
Federal judge James Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order to block Trump’s ability to exercise wartime powers to carry out deportations. However, hours later, the Trump administration went ahead with the deportations. The White House argued that a single judge in one city cannot direct the movements of foreign alien terrorists already expelled from US soil. The exact timings of the deportation flight are unclear. Critics argue that the president is wrongly invoking wartime law and that the courts should strike down its peacetime use.
The Trump administration is paying El Salvador approximately $6m for holding about 300 alleged Tren de Aragua members for a year. The Salvadorian president shared a video showing the deportees being dragged and having their heads shaved by masked El Salvador police officers. The CECOT is a 40,000-capacity maximum-security prison in El Salvador where the alleged gang members are being held. Tren de Aragua is designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO) by the US and allegedly operates in conjunction with the Nicolas Maduro regime-sponsored, narco-terrorism enterprise based in Venezuela.
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/17/trump-deports-238-gang-members-to-el-salvador-whats-the-controversy?traffic_source=rss
