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The Trump administration dismissed a federal judge’s attempt to temporarily halt the president from utilizing an 18th-century law to deport alleged migrant gang members. The administration asserted that the president’s verbal directive, as opposed to a written order, held no enforceable power.
On Saturday, Washington, DC, US District Judge James Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order aimed at preventing President Trump from invoking the Alien Enemies Act to target members of Tren de Aragua, a notorious Venezuelan prison gang whose presence in the US expanded during the Biden administration.
In a six-page filing, Justice Department attorneys stated that officials had “complied” with the March 15 order and had not removed any of the five Venezuelans who sued the Trump administration over it. “The government did so despite its powerful jurisdictional and other objections to the Court’s unprecedented assertion of judicial power to review the Proclamation,” the DOJ attorneys added, prior to a scheduled hearing later that Monday in the DC court.
Yesterday, DC District Judge James Boasberg ordered a halt on deportation flights of Venezuelan TDA gang members being removed under the Alien Enemies Act (1798).
They landed in El Salvador last night to be kept in a max security prison.
Trump’s most consequential decision yet. pic.twitter.com/qlT5DK4nxJ
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) March 16, 2025
Earlier that day, the American Civil Liberties Union, representing the five Venezuelans, filed a motion claiming that the Trump administration may have violated the court’s order by transporting approximately 250 alleged Tren de Aragua gang members to a mega-prison in El Salvador on Saturday.
The Trump administration’s DOJ countered in their filing that Boasberg issued his injunction at 7:25 p.m., after the extraction flight had already departed – and that the judge’s oral order “did not seek to interfere with the President’s Article II powers to conduct military operations overseas” by returning the suspected gangsters.
“[T]he written order did memorialize other, narrower oral directives from the hearing,” the Justice Department attorneys noted, adding that “an oral directive is not enforceable as an injunction.”
“Written orders are crucial because they clarify the bounds of permissible conduct,” they also said.
From the bench, Boasberg, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, stated that any aircraft transporting migrants out of the US must turn back, including any planes already in the air. However, the judge’s brief written order did not contain that language.
In February, there have been (15) injunctions, in (3) years under Biden there were (14)
These Judges are trying to usurp the power of the President…. Trump needs to ignore these unconstitutional temporary restraining orders… just like Biden did
— @Chicago1Ray 🇺🇸 (@Chicago1Ray) March 16, 2025
“In accord with this well-established law, the written minute order governed,” the DOJ attorneys wrote. “It enjoined the government from ‘removing’ the foreign terrorists ‘pursuant to the Proclamation.'” “The government did not violate that injunction.”
The Trump administration noted that two flights highlighted by the ACLU departed from the US before Boasberg’s written order and oral directives. “As to any flights that were already outside US territory and airspace, anyone aboard had already been ‘removed’ within the meaning of the Alien Enemies Act and the Court’s order, and therefore were not covered by the order,” the administration argued.
The Trump administration has refused to disclose how many total flights have removed migrants under the Alien Enemies Act.
Boasberg’s temporary ruling has put a 14-day restraining order on the use of the war-time authority, which the Trump administration hopes to utilize to deport any migrant it identifies as a gang member without following normal criminal and immigration channels.
