Trump deports hundreds of Venezuelans: 'Trump will do what he can get away with doing'

By Michaela Walters (with Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall)

President Trump's decision to deport 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador using a centuries-old law, despite a judge's order blocking the action, has raised questions about the limits to his presidential power.

Read time: 4 minutes

In brief:

• Donald Trump deported 238 Venezuelan immigrants, accused of being members of a criminal organisation, to El Salvador using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, despite a federal judge ordering a temporary block on the deportations.
• This has sparked debate about presidential powers versus judicial authority, although the White House claims they didn't disobey the court order as the planes were already over international waters when it was issued.

What’s the story?

It looks like a scene from a Hollywood movie - hundreds of shackled men, bent over and being led by heavily armed guards from an airplane, across the tarmac and into the back of army trucks.

Overlayed with intense music, drone cameras follow the men's journey as they travel to a facility where close-up shots show hair and beards being shaved, before they reach their final destination - a prison cell.

But it’s no movie. These men are Venezuelan, the place they are taken to is a terrorism confinement centre in El Salvador, the person sharing the video was President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele, and the person who deported them - from the United States of America - was President Donald Trump.

238 immigrants, alleged to be members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren de Aragua, were deported by Trump’s White House, who made use of The Alien Enemies Act - a law that dates back to 1798 - to do so.

The centuries-old act states that whenever there is a “declared war” or “any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted or threatened” against the US, “subjects of the hostile nation or government” could be "apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies".

Trump said the men were "perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion" on US territory.

It marks only the fourth time the act has been invoked in US history - the first three being the War of 1812 and the First and Second World Wars.

The Alien Enemies Act was “controversial even in 1798, let alone now,” Lewis Goodall says.

The facility the men were taken to is called CECOT, a notorious terrorism confinement centre that holds 40,000 people.

The move to deport these men has brought up a bigger question - whether Donald Trump is testing the “maximalist powers of the presidency,” Lewis says, as a federal Judge on Saturday ordered a temporary blocking of the deportations.

“The Trump administration was told by a judge that they could not be deported. And the Trump administration went ahead and did it anyway.”

Did Donald Trump disobey a court order?

The move to extradite the Venezuelans in spite of the court order blocking it could see The White House face one of “the most significant legal showdowns of the second second term thus far,” Lewis Goodall says.

But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has denied that the US disobeyed the court order, saying that the planes were already over international waters and couldn’t be turned back. She said; "The administration did not 'refuse to comply' with a court order."The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA (Tren de Aragua gang) aliens had already been removed from US territory."The episode has left people questioning whether the US courts have any power or influence over the President. “Who has the power? Do the courts, the judiciary, have the power, as part of the three co equal branches of government, to decide this? Or can the President just totally disregard what the courts say,” Jon Sopel asks.

“At this point, we are seeing something play out which undermines and threatens the whole basis of the US Constitution - the idea that there are three co equal branches.

“Trump's view is, ‘no, no, I'm the boss’.”

“Trump will do what he can get away with doing,” Lewis adds.

“It is up to Congress to assert its authority and to assert that the president must do what they have told him to do by law.

If they are unwilling or unable to do that - and it is certainly the case that the Republican majorities in both houses right now are unwilling to do that - then they are allowing the vacuum to be there, to allow Trump to behave in an illegal fashion.”

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