CNN
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The Trump administration said Sunday that hundreds of individuals were deported from the country after President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a sweeping wartime authority which has been used only three times before, to speed up the deportations of migrants affiliated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
The announcement comes after a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s ability to use the Alien Enemies Act on Saturday evening, and ordered any planes in the air carrying some of those migrants to turn back to the US. The judge said the temporary restraining order will remain in effect for 14 days “or until further order of the court.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that at the president’s direction, the Department of Homeland Security had arrested nearly 300 members of Tren de Aragua over the weekend, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced earlier Sunday that “hundreds of violent criminals were sent out of our country” after Trump took action on Saturday.
Rubio also thanked El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, for volunteering to imprison the alleged criminals deported from the US and said that Bukele had requested that two leaders of the MS-13 gang, as well as 21 other Salvadorans being held in the US be returned to “face justice in their homeland.”
Rubio later said in a post on X that the US “sent 2 dangerous top MS-13 leaders plus 21 of its most wanted back to face justice in El Salvador. Also, as promised by @POTUS, we sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars.”
Bukele posted on X Sunday morning that the members of Tren de Aragua arrived in El Salvador and have been transferred to CECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center “for a period of one year.” His post included a video of men being led off of busses in handcuffs and having their heads shaved.
Sharing a photo of an article about the Saturday ruling that deportation flights must return to the US, Bukele wrote “oopsie…too late.” Rubio reposted Bukele’s post.
CNN has reached out to the State Department and White House for more information about when the flights left the United States.
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he expects the executive branch is following the law, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper “we don’t know if that happened that way” when pressed on if he’s concerned that the Trump administration potentially violated the court order.
“We expect the executive branch to follow the law. We said in the past that we will follow the law. That will remain consistent,” he said, later expressing support for using “every legal means” possible to deport alleged criminals.
“I think most Americans are going to say, ‘I don’t care how old the law is, if you can use it to get these guys out and keep my family safe, we’re going to do it,’” he said.
CNN has previously reported that Erik Prince, a Trump ally, has been in contact with Bukele since last year about accepting undocumented migrants from the US if Trump was elected.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday that Democrats “stand strongly in support of the rule of law” in reference to the judge’s order, and warned against the potential impacts of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation strategy.
“All of us within the Democratic Party, we oppose illegal immigration. We believe that if you’re a violent felon, you should be deported. But we also can’t go down this road that the Trump administration is taking us on and potentially deport American citizens, deport legal and lawful permanent residents and break up law abiding immigrant families who are contributing to this country,” he said, expressing the need for “comprehensive” immigration reform.
