Members of the Trump administration said Monday they couldn't comply with the federal judge's order to return planes full of illegal alien gang members to the United States because the planes had already crossed international waters when the order was issued.
“The judge commented on returning the flight until this flight arrives in international waters heading towards El Salvador. We are already in international waters. We are outside the US border. I am the emperor of the border.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump summoned the alien enemy law of 1798 to quickly expel members of Venezuelan gangster Tren de Aragua.
Sunday night, the chief Judge of the Washington, DC Circuit Court of Appeals James Boasberg roughly stopped Trump's deportation flight 300 Gang members of El Salvador's Centre for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) claim that five passengers have yet to be cleared due to deportation.
The Obama-appointed judge then issued a Temporary Restraint Order (TRO) to ban the Trump administration from expelling the country within the next two weeks, and ordered the administration to appear in federal court on March 21. (Related: “Sanctuary Sheriff” refuses to obey ice detainees and calls them “unconstitutional”)
Homan I explained it Trump's actions were justified, and he was justified as a legal basis for deportation from the U.S. “He has the right to do” because “authors of the alien enemy acted.” The law gives the president the authority to pursue the rapid removal of foreigners during war times and invasions.
Homan concludes the interview by stating that the opposition from the judicial system and his political opponents will not stop the president from “making America safe again.”
“The threat of all criminal aliens, all criminal public statements, and the threat of national security removed from this country make this country safer,” Homan argued. “Every day, ice men and women are in the neighbours of this country and arrest illegal foreigners of crime, public safety threats, national security threats.”
Today, Tren de Aragua, the first 238 members of Venezuelan crime organization, has arrived in our country. They were immediately transferred to CECOT, the Centre for the (renewable) terrorism confinement for a year.
The US will pay them very low fees… pic.twitter.com/tfsi8cgpd6
– Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) March 16, 2025
Similarly, White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt held a press conference Monday morning, saying the judge's order to stop the flight “has no legal basis.”
“Orders without legal basis were issued after the terrorists [Tren de Aragua] The aliens had already been removed from US territory,” Levitt said. “The written order and the administration's actions are not inconsistent,” he said.
Furthermore, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear, federal courts generally have no power to remove the president's diplomacy, his authority under the Foreign Enemy Act, and his core Section II powers from the US soil and to repel declared aggression,” Lewitt added. (Related: The Trump administration has set up to deport members of Hezbollah who crossed the border under Biden to make bombs)
(Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movement of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists physically expelled from the US soil,” Leavitt concluded.
