US flies alleged gang members to El Salvador despite court block

The United States flew over 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to be imprisoned in El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele said Sunday, after US counterpart Donald Trump controversially invoked wartime legislation to expel them.

The deportations took place despite a US federal judge granting a temporary suspension of the expulsions order, apparently as planes were headed to El Salvador -- raising questions over whether the Trump administration deliberately defied the court decision.

"Oopsie ... Too late," Bukele posted on social media in response to an article on the judge's ruling, adding a crying-with-laughter emoji.

The Trump administration immediately appealed the court order, and White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt insisted Trump had used "his core powers as president and commander-in-chief to defend the American people from an urgent threat."

But civil rights groups said unidentified people whose alleged criminal links have not been publicly revealed were being deported with little or no due process.

They warned that if Trump's invocation of the wartime law is upheld in courts, it could allow the deportation of huge numbers of adult migrants without explanation or a court hearing.

Bukele announced the action Sunday on X, saying, "Today, the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren de Aragua, arrived in our country."

He shared a video of several men in handcuffs and shackles being transferred from a plane to a heavily guarded convoy, while the presidency shared photos showing prisoners' heads being shaved upon arrival in El Salvador.

Bukele said the US would "pay a very low fee" to El Salvador but did not specify the amount.

- Mega-jail with windowless cells -

In a post Sunday on his Truth Social platform, Trump referred to the deportees as "monsters sent into our Country by Crooked Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats," and thanked El Salvador for receiving them.

The US president on Friday had signed an order invoking the little-known Alien Enemies Act of 1798, but it was not publicly announced until Saturday.

The wartime authority allows a president to detain or deport citizens of an enemy nation.

It has been invoked only three times -- during the War of 1812 to expel British nationals, during World War I against nationals from enemy nations and, most notoriously, during World War II for the interment of more than 100,000 Japanese citizens and Japanese Americans.

Bukele, in a meeting last month with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, had offered to house prisoners from the United States in his country, including members of Tren de Aragua and El Salvador's own MS-13 gang.

The iron-fisted leader is extremely popular in his country for a successful crackdown on violent gangs, but has faced criticism from human rights groups.

Some Salvadorans fear his prisoner deal with the United States could set back the fight against violent crime.

Bukele said the alleged gang members had been sent to the country's maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a mega-prison southeast of capital San Salvador with capacity for 40,000 prisoners.

Inmates there are packed in windowless cells, sleep on metal beds with no mattresses and are forbidden visitors.

- 'Wartime powers' -

In a sharp rebuke Sunday, Venezuela's government said Trump had "criminalized" Venezuelan migrants, whom it said were "in their immense majority... dignified and honest" workers.

Trump, in his order, claimed Tren de Aragua was "conducting irregular warfare against the territory of the United States both directly and at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime" in Caracas.

The statement gives Trump's Attorney General Pam Bondi 60 days to enact the ruling making all Tren de Aragua gang members "subject to immediate apprehension, detention and removal."

The order will apply to all Venezuelan Tren de Aragua members who are over 14 and not naturalized US citizens or lawful permanent residents.

The ACLU rights group and an allied group, Democracy Forward, asked a US District Court in Washington to bar the deportations -- arguing that the 1798 act was not intended for use in peacetime.

A Democracy Forward statement called Saturday a "horrific day in the history of the nation, when the president publicized that he was seeking to invoke extraordinary wartime powers in the absence of a war or invasion."