White House defends deportation of Venezuelan migrants under wartime law
The Trump administration defends its use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport roughly 200 Venezuelan migrants despite a judge's order to halt the action.
The administration claims those deported were Venezuelan gang members and insists it acted within legal boundaries.
"Countless lives will be saved because of this action," says White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. "All of the planes that were subject to the written order, the judge's written order, took off before the order was entered in the courtroom on Saturday," Leavitt adds.
U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued a verbal order to turn the planes around, though apparently the planes were not and that specific directive was not included in the written order.
This comes as the judge barred deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, invoked by President Donald Trump for the first time since World War II, targeting alleged members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. It has only been used three times in U.S. history.
"A judge is saying that this is an improper use of this authority, even to the extent that if planes were already in the air, they were to turn around and bring those people back because this was such a serious violation of U.S. law," says Doris Meissner of the Migration Policy Institute.
Experts say the wartime authority takes away a person's right to have a hearing or question the charges against them or have any due process, adding the administration is testing aspects of the law. The last instance it was used was during World War II when the government detained tens of thousands of Japanese Americans.
"That's something which the government has since apologized for, and I think it goes down as a blemish in American history, so people are very nervous about him invoking it now," says political analyst Marc Sandalow.
President Trump defends his decision.
"This is a time of war because Biden allowed millions of people, many of them criminals, many of them at the highest level," Trump states.
The Department of Justice has appealed the judge's decision, and the White House questions whether a verbal order carries the same weight as a written one.
The Justice Department indicates it will not use the president's proclamation for future deportations if the decision is not overturned.
The White House said the administration paid El Salvador $6 million to detain the migrants, arguing it's less than the costs to taxpayers to hold them in maximum security prisons in the United States.