The United States deports 250 migrants from El Salvador prisons despite a judge's prohibition.

WashingtonThe Donald Trump administration has deported 250 migrants to El Salvador, invoking a 19th-century law, even though a judge had prohibited it from doing so. On Saturday, after the White House invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a federal judge in Washington temporarily suspended the law and ordered any plane carrying migrants that had left the United States under Trump's order to turn back. But authorities have acted in accordance with the law and carried out the deportations after El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele offered in Washington the possibility of using its prisons to deport migrants in exchange for a "fee."

"We have sent two dangerous top leaders of MS-13, and over 21 of the most wanted, to face justice in El Salvador," Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on Sunday. "We have also, as the President promised, sent over 250 enemy aliens, members of the Tren de Aragua, whom El Salvador has agreed to hold in its very good prisons, for a fair price."

The Bukele regime has long been under fire for practices that violate human rights. In September of last year,the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) published a report on the state of emergency in El Salvador, chronicling a series of actions in the prison system, ranging from systematic arrests without evidence to cells filled to overflowing with prisoners without food or water. There have been reports of murders in some of Bukele's prisons, although the Central American regime has always sought to link the deaths to natural causes. The IACHR report, on the other hand, reported cases of strangulation in Salvadoran prisons.

In turn, Bukele shared a photograph of the news report with the judicial blockage and wrote alongside a laughing emoji: "Oops... Too late." In another tweet, Bukele shared a three-minute video on social media showing handcuffed men getting off a plane at night and being led to prison. The video also shows prison officials shaving the prisoners' heads. The Salvadoran president wrote: "Today, the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua arrived in our country."

To accelerate his plans to deport undocumented immigrants, Trump has sought to revive a law that in nearly 250 years of American history has only been invoked in times of war. On Saturday afternoon, when no one was looking, the White House activated the Enemies of Aliens Act to facilitate the expulsion of Venezuelan migrants. But this 18th-century law was only in effect for a couple of hours. Shortly afterward, a federal judge in Washington issued an order blocking it. The fact that the flight has now arrived in El Salvador raises a scenario in which Trump may have ignored an explicit court order. escalating his campaign to challenge the judiciary.

Since his campaign rally in Aurora, Colorado, Trump had already floated the possibility of reinstating this law, which has only been activated during the 1812 War against the English, World War I, and World War II. In fact, he was expected to announce it on Friday during his speech from the Department of Justice, in which he defined himself as "the primary authority for law enforcement" in the US, although that role falls to the Supreme Court. Finally, he did so on Saturday afternoon, publishing it on the White House website and without informing the press, as has been done with executive orders and other government actions so far.

The invocation of the rule caught even the courts off guard, which had to convene a last-minute hearing. Judge James E. Boasberg ruled to block the law's enforcement as a precautionary measure and ordered a halt to any deportations that had been activated under the directive. The judge considered that it does not fall within the scope of presidential power and noted that it could cause irreparable harm, "as these people will be deported, and many or the vast majority will end up in prisons in other countries or will be sent to Venezuela, where they face persecution or worse." Therefore, the judge asked the Justice Department to comply "immediately" with the temporary order.

The rule was created when the United States was about to go to war with France in 1789, and there were fears that foreigners or non-citizens living in the country might end up sympathizing with the French. Despite being called the Alien Enemies Act, it is a set of directives that establish a requirement that a person must have resided in the country for between 5 and 14 years to be considered a U.S. citizen. This criterion gives the government more leeway to detain, imprison, and deport foreigners during times of war. Furthermore, the law also makes it a crime for U.S. citizens to "print, utter, or publish... any false, scandalous, and malicious writings" about the government.

In the text published by the White House The law is justified invoking it as a tool to deport Venezuelan migrants linked to the criminal organization Tren de Aragua (TdA, according to the acronym used by the US government): "I hereby proclaim that all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age and older who are members of TdA, found within the United States and not in fact members, be detained and removed as enemy aliens."

At least three Venezuelan nationals have been detained and sent to Guantanamo Bay under the pretext of being linked to the criminal gang, although their relatives claim otherwise. These individuals do not have a criminal history associating them with the Tren de Aragua, as the government claims, which has not provided public information about the detainees. The only common trait shared by the three detained men is that they had tattoos.

Trump has called those associated with the Tren de Aragua gang "the worst of the worst" and has made the criminal group one of the main elements of his xenophobic rhetoric to criminalize migrants arriving in the United States. The invocation of the Foreign Enemies Act represents a new escalation in the campaign of fear against the migrant community, which has become one of the main targets of the US president's ultra-right agenda.

At the end of February, the Trump administrationp left unaccompanied migrant minors alone before the judges who order their deportationsThe government ordered the suspension of legal assistance for some 26,000 children, including those who have been "victims of trafficking," according to NGOs.