Trump invoked Alien Enemies Act for CECOT transfer bundled with secret Bukele prisoner exchange, defying court order

On March 15, 2025, President Trump signed a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — a wartime statute last used during World War II — against members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, designating them "alien enemies" subject to immediate removal without the immigration hearings, bond proceedings, and judicial review normally required under the Immigration and Nationality Act. The proclamation declared that all Venezuelan citizens 14 or older who are TdA members and are not lawful permanent residents or citizens are "liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed," with no individualized finding of gang membership required before deportation. That same day, three planes carrying more than 250 Venezuelan migrants departed for El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT), a maximum-security prison with a documented record of severe conditions.

A diplomatic note the State Department has since declassified shows the operation was not solely an Alien Enemies Act removal of Venezuelans: on March 13, 2025, the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador formally requested that El Salvador accept, by the next day, two of its own nationals — César Antonio Lopez Larios, an MS-13 leader the note states was "requested by President Bukele" personally, and César Eliseo Sorto Amaya, an MS-13 leader already convicted of murder in El Salvador — alongside up to 500 Venezuelan Tren de Aragua members. El Salvador's Foreign Ministry replied the next day agreeing to the transfer and to house the TdA members for one year pending a decision on their "long-term disposition." In the same exchange, the U.S. said it intended to provide El Salvador "in-kind and financial support" in recognition of its "assistance."

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of the D.C. Circuit issued a temporary restraining order that evening blocking further AEA deportations and, according to subsequent court proceedings, ordering that any planes already in flight be turned around. The administration did not comply — the flights completed their journey to El Salvador, and the deportees were delivered to CECOT. Administration officials later argued the planes were already outside U.S. airspace when the order was entered. Judge Boasberg subsequently found the administration in contempt. A September 2025 appeals court decision found that Tren de Aragua had not conducted an "invasion or predatory incursion" within the statute's meaning, blocking continued AEA use for deportations.

The Alien Enemies Act was last invoked in World War II when Congress and the executive branch acted together under an acknowledged war; its use here was unilateral, directed at a non-state criminal organization rather than an enemy nation, and applied without the procedural safeguards Congress erected in the INA over subsequent decades. That the operation also functioned as a personal accommodation for a foreign head of state — returning a specific gang leader Bukele asked for by name, financed in part by undisclosed U.S. support — was concealed from the public by the note's original CONFIDENTIAL classification, surfacing only through later declassification. The defiance of Judge Boasberg's TRO compounded the due-process violation with a direct challenge to judicial authority.