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US secretary of state Marco Rubio said hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members had been sent to El Salvador, a day after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from using a centuries-old law to speed up deportations.
Rubio said on social media platform X that more than 250 members of Tren de Aragua had been sent to El Salvador, whose president Nayib Bukele had agreed to hold them in the country’s “very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars”.
An executive order by President Donald Trump over the weekend invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove the alleged gang members, who it said had “unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States”.
The policy relies on an authority that was last invoked in the second world war to intern non-US citizens of Italian, German and Japanese descent — one of the most contentious episodes in American history.
James Boasberg, a US federal judge in the District of Columbia, on Saturday blocked the deportation of individuals in custody who were subject to the executive order for 14 days.
Boasberg said the law invoked by Trump did “not provide a basis for the president’s proclamation given that the terms invasion, predatory incursion, really relate to hostile acts perpetrated by any nation and commensurate to war”.
In response, Pam Bondi, US attorney-general, said the “judge supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans,” adding that the order “disregards well-established authority regarding President Trump’s power, and it puts the public and law enforcement at risk”.
Rubio added that the US had also deported two top leaders from the MS-13 gang “plus 21 of its most wanted back to face justice in El Salvador”.
In a statement, the White House said: “The Department of Homeland Security successfully arrested nearly 300 Tren De Aragua terrorists, saving countless American lives. Thanks to the great work of the Department of State, these heinous monsters were extracted and removed to El Salvador where they will no longer be able to pose any threat to the American People.”
The executive order was the latest escalation in Trump’s aggressive clampdown on immigration. The president has promised mass deportations while implementing measures including seeking to limit birthright citizenship and declaring a national emergency at the US-Mexico border.
While the order targets members of Tren de Aragua, it states that the “Secretary of Homeland Security retains discretion to apprehend and remove any Alien Enemy under any separate authority”. This implies it may broaden the application of a law that critics say could turbocharge deportations while sidestepping due process.
“Invoking the Alien Enemies Act is a dangerous abuse of power intended to deprive people of their legal rights,” said Allison McManus, managing director for the National Security and International Policy department at the Center for American Progress.
The government last month designated Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organisation, after Trump on the first day of his second presidency directed his cabinet to assess a string of groups including the Venezuelan gang for national security threats.
The executive order cited Interpol Washington, which said that “Tren de Aragua has emerged as a significant threat to the United States as it infiltrates migration flows from Venezuela”.
Trump’s order stated that the gang “continues to invade, attempt to invade, and threaten to invade the country” — rhetoric often used by the president when describing immigration policy.
Legal scholars have argued that referring to illegal immigration as an “invasion” may give Trump, under US law and the Constitution, broad powers to deport individuals en masse or keep them in custody with no trial.
The executive order came hours after the American Civil Liberties Union on Saturday filed a lawsuit on behalf of five Venezuelan men in immigration custody who feared imminent removal if the Alien Enemies Act was invoked.
This measure would remove non-US citizens “without any opportunity for judicial review,” the ACLU said in court documents, adding that the statute in question was a “wartime measure that has been used only three times in our Nation’s history: the War of 1812, World War 1 and World War II”.
The government filed an appeal in the District of Columbia circuit court challenging Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining order.
