Members of the Trump administration said Monday that they could not comply with a federal judge’s order to return a plane full of illegal alien gang members back to the United States because the plane was already over international waters when the order was issued.
“It wasn’t until this flight was in international waters heading down to El Salvador that the judge made some comment about returning the flights. We are already in international waters. We’re outside the borders of the United States. I’m the border czar. Once you are outside the border, you know, it is what it is,” Homan stated during a Fox News interview.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to round up and swiftly deport members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang.
On Sunday night, Chief Judge of the Washington, DC Circuit Court of Appeals James Boasberg nearly halted Trump’s deportation flight of roughly 300 gang members to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador after he claimed that five of the passengers had not yet been cleared for deportation.
The Obama-appointed judge then issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to prohibit the Trump administration from conducting deportations within the next two weeks, and ordered the administration to appear in Federal Court on March 21st.