Takeaways from Trump's move to send Venezuelan migrants in the US to a prison in El Salvador

On Friday, March 14, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law giving him immense powers to deport noncitizens in a time of war.

His use of that law was aimed at Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that he has repeatedly and falsely claimed as part of an invasion of criminal immigrants. Over the next 24 hours, more than 130 Venezuelans were deported to an El Salvadoran prison even as a U.S. judge ordered the planes carrying them to turn around.

Here’s what you need to know about the situation:

Trump had long promised to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to combat illegal immigration. The law crafted during the presidency of John Adams had been used just three times: during the War of 1812 and the two world wars.

The Trump administration had begun moving closer to calling the migrant issue a war, most notably by designating eight Latin American criminal groups, including Tren de Aragua, as “foreign terrorist organizations.”

U.S. immigration authorities use a series of “gang identifiers” to spot members of Tren de Aragua. Some are obvious, such as trafficking drugs with known gang members.

Some are more surprising: Chicago Bulls jerseys, “high-end urban street wear,” and tattoos of clocks, stars and crowns, according to government instructional material filed in court by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Ordinary tattoos were key to marking many deported men as Tren members, according to documents and lawyers.

One of those men was a makeup artist who said he fled Venezuela after his boss at a state-run news channel publicly slapped him. In a country where political repression and open homophobia are both part of life, it’s hard to be a gay man who does not support President Nicolás Maduro.

Hoping to find a new life in America, Andry José Hernández Romero made his way north and arranged an appointment at a U.S. border crossing in San Diego.

There, he was asked about his tattoos. Romero has a crown tattooed on each wrist. One is next to the word “Mom.” The other next to “Dad.” The crowns, his lawyer says, also pay homage to his hometown’s Christmastime “Three Kings” festival, and to his work in beauty pageants.

Romero, who insists he has no ties to Tren, was transferred to a California detention center.

Then, around March 7, he was moved to a facility in Laredo, Texas, a three-hour bus ride from the South Texas city of Harlingen.

Two days before the March 14 deportations, jets chartered by a branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began landing in Harlingen from across the U.S., some carrying detained Venezuelans.

Court documents later showed that for at least the previous week, Venezuelan men in many immigration detention centers were being moved by bus and plane toward ICE’s El Valle Detention Facility, close to the Harlingen airport.

Then, a flight analyst for the advocacy group Witness at the Border noticed two Saturday flights scheduled from Harlingen to El Salvador. That was unusual. Deportations are fairly rare on Saturdays, as are deportation flights from Harlingen to El Salvador, said the analyst, Tom Cartwright, whose social media feeds are closely watched in immigration circles.

On March 14, with the Alien Enemies Act hours from being invoked and more than a day from being announced, word was filtering out from a group of Venezuelan men held at El Valle. Around 3 a.m., roughly 100 had been awakened by guards and told they were being deported. Ten hours later, the men were back in their bunks. The flight had been canceled, they were told, and they would leave soon.

Within hours, an informal legal network was frantically trying to stop those deportations and working with Texas lawyers who would file federal court petitions.

Meanwhile, later that Friday, with signs growing that deportations could be imminent, two legal advocacy groups, the ACLU and Democracy Forward, felt they had to file preemptively.

They spent hours drafting a petition on behalf of five detained Venezuelans who feared being falsely labeled members of Tren and deported.

Finally, early Saturday morning they filed the petition with the U.S. District Court in Washington, seeking to halt all deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

Later that day, Judge James E. Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order in response to the ACLU lawsuit and scheduled a 5 p.m. hearing.

In Texas, though, things began to move faster. Guards gathered prisoners at the El Valle detention center, ordering them onto buses for the airport. The flights carried a total of 261 deportees, the White House later said, including 137 Venezuelans deported under the Alien Enemies Act, 101 under other immigration regulations, and 23 El Salvadoran members of the gang MS-13.

About 4 p.m. the White House posted Trump’s proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act.

Roughly an hour later Boasberg opened his hearing over Zoom.

He asked whether the government planned to deport anyone under the proclamation “in the next 24 or 48 hours.” The ACLU warned that deportation planes were about to take off. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign said he was unsure of the flight details.

Eventually Boasberg issued a new order to stop deportations being conducted under the Alien Enemies Act. He said any planes in the air needed to come back.

“This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately,” he told Ensign.

By then, two ICE Air planes were heading across the Gulf of Mexico and toward Central America. Neither turned around.

The next morning, El Salvador’s president tweeted a New York Post headline saying Boasberg had ordered the planes turned around.

“Oopsie … Too late,” Nayib Bukele wrote, adding a laughing/crying emoji.

The Trump administration is now urging the Supreme Court for permission to resume deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. Boasberg soon could rule on whether there are grounds to find anyone in contempt of court for defying his court order.

As for Romero, the makeup artist, he’s somewhere in CECOT.

FILE - In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP, File)

FILE - U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, stands for a portrait at E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, March 16, 2023. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via AP, File)

FILE - In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, a prison guard transfers deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP, File)

Prisoners look out of their cell as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

A prisoner with a tattoo with leg irons on stands as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Prisoners sit in their cell as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE - A mega-prison known as Detention Center Against Terrorism (CECOT) stands in Tecoluca, El Salvador, March 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday said the Trump administration must facilitate the return of a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to prison in El Salvador, rejecting the administration’s emergency appeal.

The court acted in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears he would face persecution from local gangs.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had ordered Abrego Garcia, now being held in a notorious Salvadoran prison, returned to the United States by midnight Monday.

“The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,” the court said in an unsigned order with no noted dissents.

Chief Justice John Roberts had already pushed back Xinis' deadline, and the justices said that her order must now be clarified to make sure it doesn’t intrude into executive branch power over foreign affairs, since Abrego Garcia is being held abroad. The court said the Trump administration should also be prepared to share what steps it has taken to try and get him back — and what more it could potentially do.

The administration claims Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, though he has never been charged with or convicted of a crime. His attorneys said there is no evidence he was in MS-13.

The administration has conceded that it made a mistake in sending him to El Salvador, but argued that it no longer could do anything about it.

The court’s liberal justices said the administration should have hastened to correct “its egregious error” and was “plainly wrong” to suggest it could not bring him home.

“The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by her two colleagues.

In the district court, Xinis wrote that the decision to arrest Abrego Garcia and send him to El Salvador appears to be “wholly lawless.” There is little to no evidence to support a “vague, uncorroborated” allegation that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was once in the MS-13 street gang, Xinis wrote.

Abrego Garcia, 29, was detained by immigration agents and deported last month.

He had a permit from the Homeland Security Department to legally work in the U.S. and was a sheet metal apprentice pursuing a journeyman license, his attorney said. His wife is a U.S. citizen.

In 2019, an immigration judge barred the U.S. from deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, finding that he faced likely persecution by local gangs.

A Justice Department lawyer conceded in a court hearing that Abrego Garcia should not have been deported. Attorney General Pam Bondi later removed the lawyer, Erez Reuveni, from the case and placed him on leave.

Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.

Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks during a news conference at CASA's Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)